Life with Larry
by Jedi's Pal
Summary: Welcome to the dark & dangerous world of Life with Larry Sizemore. A series of one shots & occasional double tap tales dealing with all that is one of Burn Notice's fav villains. Larry & Michael did twenty missions together on three continents. What were the missions? How did he become Michael's partner? Why do Larry and Sam despise each other? Warning: some chapters dark & intense
1. Moscow USSR 1988

_**Disclaimer: Burn Notice**__ and nearly all the characters mentioned herein belong to somebody else. We've just brought them out of the toy box for a while._

**_A/N:_** _Welcome to the dark and dangerous world of Life with Larry, the first in a series of one shots about Larry Sizemore, the undead spy we all love to hate. _

_Some chapters will be very dark and intense (like this one) and others not as much, although still marked by the black humor that we associate with Lord of the Undead as Sam calls him. This is Larry we are talking about afterall!_

_These stories will cover Larry's life from 1998 through 2000. First up, __who is Larry? Where did he come from? Who made him the man he became? These are some of the questions, but you may wish we never took the time to answer! _

_This series will update every Thursday night at 10:00 PM ET after #BurnerClub. If you don't know what that is, then join the fun every Thursday at 9:00 PM ET for live tweeting and DVD watching._

_Much love and thanks to all the wonderful Burners out there who help us keep __**Burn Notice**__ alive!_

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**Moscow, USSR 1988**

He walked slowly back to his stolen car, arm pressed tight to his injured side, thankful for the bulky overcoat that hid a multitude of sins and kept out the world infamous Russian winter cold. The drive from the private ducha in the woods back into the city had exhausted him; but he had to keep moving. Clutching a bottle tight in one hand and his pistol in the other, the man returned to his transportation and headed for a place he could hide out until he had dealt with his wounds and his circumstances.

_Sometimes, fighting is about tactical retreats. Surviving, living to fight another day, that's what you do._

He ascended the narrow metal staircase on shaky legs, leaning heavily against the wall on his good side. The dark haired man paused to catch his breath at the top of the landing and then moved into the small apartment over the unoccupied auto repair shop. No one would be back before Monday. The prior occupant had died last week and there would be no one by to disturb the meager contents or him. He had been damn lucky this time. He was still alive. He had lived to fight another day, but just barely.

_Luck ain't a lady, Kid. She's a fickle bitch who can make you or break you. Even if you're the best at what you do, sometimes the other bastard gets luckier. That's when you have to be even better._

The words of his mentor echoed in his head as he prepared to clean the tiny tunnels the bullets had carved through his flesh. The alcohol he'd used to sterilize the blade was the local rot gut. A bleeding man would have attracted too much attention and a couple of gunshot wounds would be hard to explain away at the local hospital given the angle he'd been hit. He couldn't risk being identified by anyone.

_Be careful when it looks like you're getting what you want. That's when you get careless—and careless will get you killed._

He _had_ gotten sloppy. He'd taken his attention off the escort they had used to track their quarry. The woman was a top earner, a favorite of all the rich and powerful in the government and in the secret police. He knew if he shadowed her long enough, she would lead him to the man on the bed, who had information that he wanted, information that he was going to get before he handed him over to the CIA.

_Whether you're in Moscow or in Minsk, call girls are a good source of information. Men say things to a good looking broad. They let down their guard. They start thinking with their dicks instead of their heads._

"Listen here now, lil lady, ya stop that bawlin', ya hear? Come along right quiet like now and thar won't any trouble," his colleague had pulled the shrieking woman from atop of her customer and off the bed.

Naked and but no longer hysterical, the blonde had been ushered into the next room by his partner, pointing a gun directly at the high dollar hooker's head, ensuring her silent cooperation. Once the door had closed behind them, he'd put the pair out of his mind. She was no match for an armed CIA agent.

_Some people live and some people die, Kid. The idea is to make sure you're the former and not the latter._

He bit down hard on the pencil wrapped in cheap tissue while appreciating just how close he had come to being the latter and not the former. The first bullet had skipped off his rib, a quick in and out that if it had found its mark, he would have been treated to a collapsed lung at best and probably a lodged-in-his-heart shot at worst. Luckily, his opponent was only able to get her hands on the snub nose .38 back-up gun his now deceased associate had been carrying in his ankle holster.

_Never trust a woman. They have lots of good uses, but they'll kill you if you don't keep your eye on 'em._

Sage advice he had ignored to his detriment. The second bullet had entered just below his ribs and exited just above his hip bone. If he had succeeded in coming all the way around the doorway to finish investigating the gun shots, he'd have been a dead man. But she'd shot too soon and he had pulled back just in time to see his target reaching under a pile of pillows behind his bald head for a weapon.

_Some fights you can't win. You just gotta make sure you don't lose too badly._

If he hadn't already shot the KGB colonel he'd been sent to extract, he'd have killed the sonuvabitch all over again as he poured the hooch onto the entrance and exit wounds, clenching his teeth in an effort not to make any more noise than necessary. With the woman firing at him from behind good cover, he'd been forced to kill his asset-to-be before the man could bring the firearm bear on him.

_They try to teach ya to give your life for the Cause, but lemme tell ya, pal, there's nothing in this world worth dying for. You're supposed to make the other guy die for his country. It's about surviving._

The полковник had certainly died for his country and the проститутка was going to get the opportunity to join him as soon as he was well enough to hunt the cyka down to make her pay for what she'd done.

_Remember, Kid, they say that revenge is a dish which people of taste prefer to eat cold and there's something to that. But I'm here to tell ya, there's nothing like twisting a blade into their heart. You're never more alive than when you're killing someone up close and personal with your own two hands._

As much as he would have loved to be treating the blonde who'd almost killed him to a karambit across the throat, right now he had a hot knife that he needed to apply to himself. Running the hunting knife he always carried for luck over the open flame of the candle, he clamped down on the wooden object between his teeth and started cutting and searing the ragged flesh of the exit wound next to his hip.

_Pain is a great motivator. It makes people really cooperative. The key is learning where to apply it._

White hot agony shot along his nerve endings, screaming their objections to the field medicine he was performing. He'd had to balance how much vodka he could pour down his throat to numb the protests of his body to what he was doing to it with the loss of fine motor control that came with the drinking.

Suddenly, there was another voice in his head. Not the voice of his mentor, the man who had been his savior, but the words of his long dead, rotting-in-his-grave-just-like-the-bastard-deserved tormentor.

_You had rules and you had discipline and if you didn't follow the rules, there was hell to pay. Father was the man of the house. Sometimes, it wasn't nice, but we learned; we sure did learn. Now, face the wall._

Hands, not bullet holes, dug into his hips… a baton, not a .38 slug, impacted his ribs, knocking the breath out of him. He realized belatedly he was passing out, but he couldn't stop what he knew was coming.

_Amusement accompanied his anguish… Invading his pre-adolescent body in the worst ways imaginable, grown men took their pleasure at his pain… no Vaseline for you…learn to swallow or else…face the wall!_

_NO!_ It was bad vodka… cheap home brew purchased with crumpled rubles near the pipelines in Kapotnya, where he'd been forced to lay low and treat himself from the gunshot wounds lest the OMSDON find him. It would almost be worse to be rounded up by the militsiya than it would the KGB.

_That chilly October night, his twelfth birthday…a present he would never forget…gang raped and a cake._

The fumes here… that must have had something to do with the way his head was spinning. The nearby Moscow oil refinery happily pumped huge amounts of chemicals into the air, making the raion one of the most polluted and unhealthy of the hundred and twenty five districts in the Soviet capital. There was no escaping the distinctively foul odor that permeated the area and left him light headed to boot. Add the trip over badly lit, barely drivable back roads into the city and he was on the cusp of consciousness.

_Use your rage, Kid. It's what makes you who you are. You don't have to keep all the darkness bottled up inside you all the time anymore. You know what you wanna do. When the time is right, you just aim yourself at the target and pull that trigger, baby. Live in the moment and enjoy what you're doing._

_Yes…_ he had used his fear and his rage the night he and Thomas Marcano had escaped from Wilkinson's. Their feet had flown them across the melting snow heading fast towards the river that marked the back property boundary of the state run home for boys. Two of 780 youthful offenders housed in 5 units fleeing fast from what appeared to be a nice school or university, but that illusion was deliberate.

_Tommy was down, slipping on the wet dead April grass near the river bank. He was torn, paralyzed with indecision. Help his friend or flee to freedom across the frigid waters? The guards were almost on them._

Shaking limbs staggered him towards the bed. Two clean towels would serve as bandages for now. He'd gotten all the lead out, no fragments to fester, and that was enough. It had to be. He couldn't afford to go into shock. Between the bad booze, bad air and blood loss, he needed to get horizontal in a hurry.

_Johnny, turn the radio down…_

_He ignored the perennial call of his mother and went back to reading "The Shadow Unmasks." He wouldn't have had to turn it up if it wasn't for what she'd been doing in the next room. Poor, now widowed, a troubled pre-teen in tow, no source of income and two mouths to feed, his mother had taken to "entertaining" in the only other room in their run down flat. He never knew his actual father…He'd been a sailor moving through the Port of New York coming back from the war with loads of lies on his lips to get up his mom's skirt and viola… he was born…and abandoned. Who knew if it would have been any better or worse than having to live all those years with his abusive drunk of a stepfather?_

Just something about squids he'd always hated. It had been his pleasure to make life as hard as possible for every frogman he was assigned to, short of botching the mission, and he did it with a pleasant smile on his face. He had been a cold warrior for almost twenty years… damned if some wet-behind-the-ears swabbie was going to tell him how to run a mission… The room spun as he tried to keep in the present.

_They were beating Tommy to death… slowly, systematically, as painfully as the amateurs could manage. And they were making him watch…letting them know how he was going to die…after they'd had their fun with him as well…one last time…yes, they'd made him watch that, too. Their faces were burned into his brain for the rest of eternity…which probably wasn't going to be very long apparently…_

He tried to fight his way through the haze of alcohol-fueled low blood pressure. He refused to die. Death hadn't taken him then and it wasn't going to take him now. Too many scores to settle, too much money to be made… He'd survived the Kitchen, he'd survived Wilkinson's. He would survive this too!

_Turn tha fecking radio down, ya little bastid!_

_Not damned likely while his favorite show was on, "Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men?" They both did. But John Reilly was an Irishman with a quick temper and faster fists. Domestic abuse was a cottage industry in Hell's Kitchen back in the day. The will of the church was forceful. For a marriage to end, someone had to die. And die somebody did indeed. The grieving widow never knew who ended it._

Helluva thing to get away with killing the bastard, his first homicide, and then get sent to Wilkinson's for a murder he hadn't committed. But Carcaterra and Sullivan, his supposed friends, paid dearly for the lies that cleared their names, but sent him and Tom to that state run hellhole for involuntary manslaughter.

_Styler and Addison were down by the river, weighting down what was left of Thomas Marcano. If he was going to do something, it had to be now while there were only two of them with him. But, how the hell—_

_And then Hades itself appeared to have answered his prayer._

_A figure stepped out of the trees, a man in a trench coat, wearing a fedora, a dark scarf wrapped around his features against the cold. With lightning speed, he broke the neck of Ferguson and the man's corpse had barely hit the ground before Nokes, the organizer of his personal tour through hell, was breathing his last, gasping and clutching weakly at the knife sticking out his heart, his savior giving it a final twist before releasing that body too. The duo at the river had been long gone before he'd turned back around._

_He really should have been thanking the man for saving him, but the only thing he could see was the group leader of their floor, the man who had eradicated what tiny fragment of decency he'd had left, lying on the ground in front of him with the blade in his chest singing to him, singing like an angel's voice._

He was sweating now and freezing too. He no longer knew up from down. The room was a black swirl. But twenty seven years ago, he had been just as disconnected, only he had been seeing nothing but red.

_He seized the hilt, pulling it out of the remains of Sean Nokes only to plunge it back in again and again, stabbing what was left behind multiple times and Ferguson as well. Then, using the handle as a brass knuckle, he smashed the noses, the mouths, the eyes of the two dead men until his own hands were covered in their blood and he had nearly exhausted himself from the cathartic effort. One last job, one last bit of retribution, one last thing to cut off and stuff down their throats! Finally, he remembered…_

"_I like your enthusiasm, but we gotta work on your technique if you're gonna be sticking around."_

_He stared dumbfounded into the black eyes above the dark cloth that blocked the view of his features._

"_Who are you?"_

"_Who do you think I am?"_

"_The Shadow…" he had whispered, not caring that the barrier between his crazed blue eyes and the man's face should have been red. There was crimson color everywhere, on him, on them, on the ground._

"_Hmmm…" The man chuckled. "And who are you?"_

"_John… John Reilly Jr…" He wasn't though. That had been the name they'd given him when she'd remarried. It was not his name. It was never going to be his name ever again. "But not anymore…"_

"_Good answer. You're a smart kid. You could go places with the right training. You wanna live? Then say the word, cuz the police are gonna be here eventually and we've got one helluva crime scene to clean up. Otherwise, I can make it quick and painless for you, kid, and I'll go back to what I was doing before."_

_He had stared at him blankly. He had thought he was dead and now he was being offered a new life._

And what a life it had become.

_()()()()()()()_

When the team had found him, he'd been hallucinating about killing Adam Styler, who became a beat cop with a coke problem, and the very special end he'd arranged for Henry Addison, who'd become a community outreach director in Brooklyn working for the mayor's office, but still liked to have sex with young boys. He'd overheard them talking from a great distance, or so it seemed to him, about the creepy smile he'd had on his face when they'd made their way into his little bolt hole and done the exfil.

"Well, son, that's cryin' shame about Brick, but Ah'm gonna see to it that he gits a medal fer whud he done. Yep, his pappy sure gonna be pleased… Course it'll have ta be a secret fer now."

Larry wasn't sure what kind of medals they gave out for letting a woman get the drop on you and blowing an operation all to hell and back. But if Senator J.B. Jamieson wanted someone to get a commendation, then they got one. Maybe he'd get the old bastard to give him one someday.

"_JB, this young associate is my protégé, Larry Sizemore. Larry, I'd like you to meet Senator Jamieson."_

_The large man with the mane of brown hair that was busy turning gray had held out a meaty paw and given him a bone crushing hand shake. This was the final moment, a graduation of sorts. His mentor was introducing him to the most connected and corrupt man in all of the United States. He was handing over the reins, so to speak, and letting him fly free on his own. He never saw him again after that day._

"_You just go on an' call me JB, sonny. Me and Mr. Cranston heah have known each other too long to be standing on ceremony now. Ah understand that you have quite a talent fer the work that needs to be done. Ah've always appreciated talent an' Ah knows how ta reward it. We do understand each other?"_

Mr. Sizemore shook his head. _Must be the drugs they had him on..._ He'd never had trouble losing focus like that before. Getting lost in the past with the Senator had distracted him from what the man was saying to him in the present. He was actually almost sorry about Breeland getting killed. His partner had proven himself useful during their time in the USSR, which was in the process of falling apart. Larry had been looking forward to helping give it the final push and capitalizing on the situation on its way down.

"Well, Ah needs ta git a going, son. Ah just wanted ta make sure muh favorite company man was okay."

"Appreciate your concern, Senator," and with that, he ended the call. He had almost bought the farm this time. It must have been a really close call for all the demons of his past to get loose, coming out to dance in his head. But they were locked up where they belonged again and he was Special Agent Larry Sizemore of the CIA again, as well as the world's best free-lance assassin that nobody ever talked about.

He stared at the three off-gray walls of his room in a secret field hospital hidden in the confines of West Berlin. He hadn't actively thought about the man who had saved him for a decade, but his lessons in tradecraft were so ingrained in his mind, it was like "Old Fritz" was there, talking in his head all the time.

_Those lessons had started immediately. They had weighted down the bodies of Ferguson, Nokes and the last actual friend he would ever have and set them adrift in the deepest part of the river he could reach._

_The mystery man had assured him the current would do the rest and then he had disappeared. The young kid he'd been had stood on the banks, shivering in the early spring chill in his wet clothes, wondering if he was insane to be waiting there for a stone cold killer instead of running for his life._

_Then he decided that he was crazy and that being sane had not brought one good thing into his life. He had determined then to fully embrace the destiny he knew was waiting for him in the darkness. No one was going to have power over him again. He was going to be the one dishing out the pain from now on._

_The Shadow had returned with the tools to clean up the evidence, sending that into the river as well, and oversized but clean clothes for his new apprentice, who hadn't hesitated to peel off his past along with the bloody clothes and send them into the water's depths as well._

_As it turned out, Kent Allard, or at least that was the name on the mail at the nearby flat, had been on the grounds of Wilkinson's scouting Ralph Ferguson. He'd had a second contract to fulfill from the people who had wanted the man's state trooper father dead. His new mentor had directed to him to clean up while he was acquiring appropriate clothing for his new charge. Thanks to his contribution, the contract was finished earlier than Allard had anticipated and they had a little time before they needed to pack up the rental and move along. That day, he had become Henry Amaud, the first of many cover ID's to come._

It was years before he had the full picture. He'd been taken under the wing of a CIA master assassin and operations specialist, whose career spanned from the Agency being born out of the OSS until the day the man had been disgraced going into the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Old Fritz had once let slip that he'd seen to it the Kennedy family had paid for that betrayal. The fact the Company had been including his mentor in their unannounced LSD experiments on unknowing participants had only recently come to his attention.

"_You've exceeded all my expectations," Mr. Cranston had declared as they were on their way to the meeting with Jamieson. "I'm proud of you, Kid. You are my legacy to the Agency for all they've done."_

The man who had saved his life, who had raised him, taught him the trade, made him the spy that he was, that man who had handed over all his Company contacts as well as all his freelance contracts, he had disappeared out of his life just as abruptly as he had entered it, never to be seen or heard of again.

The door to his right opened and he was surprised, but somehow not at all surprised, to see someone from the Directorate of Operations office in Washington DC standing there. He knew who Patrick Meacham was. He had met the man several times throughout their mutual careers at the Agency and they'd done some very successful and profitable off the books operations together over the years also.

_Obviously, this whole mission had been a bigger fubar than he'd first imagined. First, a call from JB and now a visit from Meachem… had the management of the clandestine services branch figured out what he and Brick had been up to snatching the Colonel early or was something even bigger going on?_

"Agent Sizemore, glad the government didn't have to lose all your valuable training and experience, shame about Breeland though. You two were a good team. Maybe you'd like to share why you decided to move up the timeframe for the rendition?"

Larry considered his options with a big smile on his face and then replied, "We were monitoring an escort service for another operation and got some actionable intelligence. You know how it is; guys get careless around a beautiful woman, let their guard down."

Mr. Meacheam returned the smile. "Let me save you the trouble, Larry."

He opened the folder he was carrying and handed over a two photographs. The blonde Amazon who had killed his partner and had nearly taken him out as well was staring back at him with a saucy smirk and cool blue eyes. She was wearing clothes this time, though the outfit exposed a lot of the cleavage he'd already seen completely uncovered. The second photograph was a complete contrast: no makeup, black hair pulled back in a tight bun, harsh expression set above a standard issue Soviet military uniform.

"Meet Natasha Chenkov, who succeeded in killing one CIA agent before he ever got a shot off and nearly finishing off one of the most wonderfully talented wet work specialists I've ever met. I'm still not sure how you managed to survive with nothing more than a couple of near misses and a case of septic shock. It was tough processing the scene, which as it turns out is a good thing for our side. She burned the ducha to the ground before the Company or the KGB could arrive to examine the scene."

Mr. Sizemore smiled even brighter and observed, "Looks like it was my lucky day."

"There was more to it than luck, I'm afraid." He handed over the photographs of the burned remains of what had once between the secret getaway of many members of the Politburo and the secret police. Photographs of the unfortunate KGB Colonel's corpse where followed what he supposed was once the body of his deceased colleague. "We've removed the ballistic evidence from the scene, but someone called in your location. You were followed and yet fortuitously somehow you're still alive."

_Pro's don't just watch for tails and wipe off fingerprints. You wanna be sure you can't be traced? You rig all the evidence against you to go up in flames if anyone starts looking somewhere they shouldn't._

Larry shuffled the two pictures of Comrade Chenkov back to the top of the stack.

"In addition to body guarding the top brass in Moscow, Evelyn Salt was one of the Soviet Union's most effective double agents. She was taken as a child and raised by the GRU for one of their specialty sleeper units. We understand that she's a contractor now, but she still does a lot of work for the Russians and she usually doesn't leave loose ends like that, especially not American intelligence loose ends."

_It's best to be unknown. It allows you to adjust to any situation and be whoever you need to be. However, there are certain advantages to being known. Reputations can be a powerful tool._

Evelyn Salt…? He had heard the name, who hadn't? _Evelyn Salt had tracked him down and let him live?_

"Yes, you see the problem. Until we're certain your cover is intact and you haven't been compromised, we're re-assigning you. Hopefully half a world away is enough to keep you in one piece and this mess contained. Because make no mistake, this is one colossal pig screw." Meacheam took back the pictures and shuffled them into the manila folder. "You'll report to the regional station chief for Bolivia as soon as you've been cleared by the doctors."

And with that, his superior headed for the door. His hand on the knob, the older man turned back and looked over this shoulder.

"Be more careful," he admonished before exiting. "We'd hate to lose you."

_There's nothing worse for anyone that's been in the game to be up against a ghost. You can deal with an enemy you know, but an enemy you don't know? Could be a competitor who knows all about your operation… could be a foreign agent setting you up. Your only option is to disappear._

Larry Sizemore, cold warrior extraordinaire and former scourge of the Soviet Union, rotated his shoulders back while turning his neck from side to side with the corresponding cracking sounding loudly in the nearly silent recovery room. He took a deep breath and then smiled brightly at no one at all.

_Time to work on my tan..._


	2. Trinidad Bolivia 1989

**A/N: **_Welcome to the second chapter of __Life with Larry__. We hope we didn't traumatize everyone too much. These stories cover Larry's life in the second half of his career with the CIA during his post-Cold War days, through him faking his own death and beyond. This is our answer to those eternal questions about how and where Larry met our heroes and the dark paths he led them down. Chapters are named for the year and the location of the story._

_On tonight's installment, we learn about Sam and Larry's first mission together. We have tried to make this series, much like __Victims of War__, as realistic as possible, which means some chapters will be more intense, but this is not one of those. Larry may have been able to take Michael to some very dark places, but Sam Axe has always refused to go there!_

**()()()()()()()**

**Trinidad, Bolivia 1989**

Larry Sizemore threw open the French doors of his second floor room at the Hotel Castello to step out onto the small narrow balcony, which gave him an excellent view over the Plaza Mariscal Jose Ballivian and the various routes in and out of the center of the city. The plaza was made up of a large, neatly grassed square, criss-crossed by footpaths and surrounded by wide roads that even in the height of the morning rush hour looked remarkably empty, as compared to the spy's usual haunts in the cities of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republic.

As assignments which had you stuck out in the middle of the Bolivian rainforest went, pretending to be a soil scientist working for the Fundacion Natura Bolivia wasn't too shabby. It had at least gotten him a decent room in a four star hotel in the center of the largest city in the district.

Officially, his job as a lover of dirt was to go out daily into the southernmost edge of the Amazon Basin and make sure all the naughty little farmers and plantation owners were not cutting back too many trees or dumping their waste in areas which would pollute the rivers flowing past the towns further downstream. Of course, that was just his cover. What he really was doing was monitoring and gathering intelligence on the various revolutionaries and militia groups who used the vast forest to hide out and plan their next kidnapping or bid to overthrow the government, which was decidedly unfriendly towards its former soviet allies.

For a top field agent and former cold warrior, he was more accustomed to high risk assignments operating in the murky underbelly of the Eastern Bloc countries of Europe. So, having to pretend to be a tree hugging, dirt loving scientist stuck in the middle of the jungle could have turned into the assignment from hell. But Larry liked to think of himself as adaptable and besides it hadn't taken him long to find ways to keep himself entertained.

His cover ID as a contractor for an influential foundation opened a lot of doors in local government circles, allowing a curious operative to delve into anything that he found interesting, and nothing interested Larry like a little piece of juicy gossip. As the charming ecologist, who always seemed to be able to find time to stop and chat around the water cooler each Friday before delivering his latest report to the head of the Department of the Environment, it hadn't take Mr. Sizemore, or rather his present cover Hector Neumann, long to discover that the Head of Sanitation for the district had a very demanding mistress who, according to the gossip in his department, was now inconveniently pregnant and pestering _the poor man_ to leave his wife.

One carefully worded anonymous phone call later, one promising the department head a way out of his present difficulty, was followed shortly thereafter by a certain government official transferring a large sum of money in to an anonymous foreign account. A week later, the mistress was no longer a problem for Señor Sanchez and Mr. Sizemore's numbered bank account in the Caymans was ten thousand US dollars better off.

_It's supply and demand, kid, economics at its most basic really. If somebody is sad enough or mad enough and they have the moolah, they'll pay plenty to men like you and me to see their troubles disappear._

Larry chewed on his lower lip and stared out across the plaza, his blue eyes focusing on the statue in the center of the square. His mentor's words were as true today as they had been back in the day.

But on this particular day, it wasn't so much about a man with money calling the shots. No, it was some whiny mining executive with the ear of somebody high up in DC, whose dumb ass daughter had gotten herself kidnapped by a group rumored to be hiding out in the southernmost edge of the Amazon basin and, lo and behold within hours, the Joint Command was sparing a Navy SEAL to assist their nearest intelligence asset in the region in finding the girl and get her safely back home.

Under normal circumstances, the thought of having to work with any member of Special Forces, especially somebody he had never worked with before, would have had the spy seething in a quiet rage while checking on his supply of heart stopping poisons. But not this time, this time he was going to be on his best behavior.

He was going to play nice because, after the colossal pig screw his last mission in Moscow had turned into, the CIA agent and part time assassin knew he was being monitored closely. Two bullet holes in his own body, a dead partner, a dead target and the disturbing piece of intel that a former Russian GRU officer turned freelance assassin had blown his cover and was most likely looking to finish the job of ending his life was _not_ how he had envisioned his time in the USSR ending.

_This mission had to go well._ He needed to make sure the powers that be back in DC knew he was back on top of his game after his injuries. The Soviet Bloc was rapidly falling to pieces and he'd had plans in place to take advantage of the situation. Besides, after far too many months in the heat and humidity of the Amazon jungle, Mr. Sizemore was more than eager to get back to the more temperate climate of Eastern Europe.

Spotting one of the white and red buses which ran between the Teniente Jorge Henrich Arauz Airport and the city, Larry put away his thoughts of what he had left behind in Soviet Russia and concentrated on watching the mixture of locals and tourists disembarking from the vehicle below.

Glancing at his wristwatch and then back down to the people organizing their luggage, he could see three men who could possibly his new best friend. With a sigh, he turned back into his room. Closing and locking the French doors, he grabbed his lightweight cream blazer and headed down towards reception. _It was time to go to work._

Pausing on the wide sweeping staircase, the spy surveyed the scene at reception as the newcomers stood in line waiting to check in. His sharp blue eyes were quickly picking out that one of his likely targets wasn't where he should be and that was when his highly tuned ears caught the sound of a good humored baritone voice speaking bad Spanish, followed by some feminine giggling.

The covert operative's jaw clenched, his teeth ground together and his whole body stiffened. If he had possessed a fur coat, each and every hackle would have been standing upright.

_Johnny, why don't you go out and go see your friends for an hour?_

_He hadn't wanted to go out. It was cold outside and the rain was bouncing off the pavement. But since his dear ol' step-dad had departed the world with a little help from an overdose of Old Lady Berkovich's heart attack medicine, his mom had gone back to making money the only way she could and, judging by the drunken swabbie who was slobbering over his mother, the Fleet was in._

The infuriated man crushed the memory of a childhood best forgotten. His recent brush with death had shaken a few things loose that normally would have _never_ gotten out of the locked room in his head where his past was barricaded. The fool in the bar was telling another off-color joke and the bar maid was laughing back. The sound grated on Larry's very last nerve, but he was a professional! In an instant, the fury was masked behind a wide affable grin and sparkling blue eyes which showed nothing but good humor and friendship.

Jogging the rest of the way down the stairs, the dark haired spy followed the sounds of boozy flirting while soothing his murderous inclinations with the thought that the Amazon Basin was vast and filled with dangerous criminal groups and revolutionaries, along with a whole lot of animals and insects, which could kill an unwary traveller.

His target was sitting at the bar with his bags at his feet. Larry skimmed over the luggage, noting that along with a large black canvas rucksack, the loud mouth had a fancy looking camera case looped over his shoulder, which no doubt hid the suppressors he was carrying for his hardware.

Moving up from the man's luggage, the undercover agent turned his attention to the man himself. Even slouched at the bar with a bottle of cheap beer in his hand, Larry picked up on the guy being far more than a drunken tourist.

SEALs, Deltas and Rangers came in all shapes and sizes; there was no one "look." But what they all did have in common was muscle tone and a certain gleam in the eye and this guy had it all. _Yes, this was his contact_, Larry was sure. But he didn't show it, not yet. If the frogman _was_ a drunk, he didn't care what high command said. He would not work with somebody who was going to get him killed. If he had to, he'd leave the lush to drown himself in alcohol and find the girl on his own.

Signaling the bar maid, Señor Neumann gestured to a table in the corner of the room. "Cafe con leche, por favor, Señorita."

"Hey, Mister Neumann, that's you, isn't it, fella?"

Larry paused, blinked slowly and then, with his smile firmly in place, faced the chump at the bar. The SEAL was on his feet, walking straight at him with a broad welcoming smile on his face.

"Name's Chuck, Chuck Finley... The foundation sent me out to get some promotional shots. Please tell me the head office told you I was coming out here today."

_At least the drunkard remembered his cover._ "Well, hi there, Chuck." _Mr. Neumann_ stuck out his hand. "It's a treat to hear an American accent. It's been a while."

"Why don't I get checked in and drop my bags and then we can get going? I have a deadline and you know what the guys are like back at HQ. They want them photographs back as quick as I can find the perfect shot."

The lumbering sea mammal gave him a hearty hand shake and a friendly slap on the arm, as if they were best buddies, before picking up his bags to head for the now unoccupied reception staff. "Hola, mi nombre es Finley. Tengo una habitación reservada para los cuatro días."

Having watched his new best friend sign in at the desk, Larry took a seat in the corner of the bar and sipped on the milky coffee he had ordered while plotting how he was going to find one little girl in the vast jungle which began literally just miles from the city limits.

By the time _Chuck_ came back to join him, the dark haired operative had decided on the best way forward with the mission. He would start at the top with the policia and government officials and work his way down. There were several people in the local criminal element who might have heard rumors of a kidnapping and, from his daily trips out to the edges of the Amazon Basin, he knew which of the small farmers and ranchers were sympathetic to the revolutionary groups hidden in the jungle. It was just going to be a case of having a quiet word in the right place.

"Okay, I'm squared away and ready to roll." The SEAL was back with his ruck sack looking decidedly lighter and, unless the spy was mistaken, the younger man was also now packing at least two concealed weapons on his person.

"That's great, Chuck." Larry got to his feet. "Let's get this shoot over and done with and get you back to where you belong."

He led the way out of the hotel and around to where he had left the open top Jeep emblazoned with the _Fundacion Natura Bolivia_ logo which made up part of his cover.

"Nice wheels," the navy man commented as he tossed his ruck sack into the back and took up the passenger seat.

"Helps with all the road blocks. The army can't be bothered with the paperwork involved in arresting a government funded official and, as long as the revolutionaries aren't stirred up, they leave the crazy gringo who's out every day taking soil samples and counting trees alone."

"You go out counting trees?" The SEAL's brown eyes widened in disbelief.

The spy shrugged. "_And_ when I want to check out buildings, one of my favorite explanations for needing unfettered and unlimited access is searching for signs of methyltricitritate."

"What the hell is that?"

"I haven't gotta clue. But if I go in wearing a full Hazmat suit, they soon stand back and let me get on with the job." He chuckled as he pulled away from the curb.

The rest of the morning went pleasantly enough to keep the dark haired man in a good mood. He learned early on that Chuck Finley was in fact Sam Axe, a lieutenant commander with many years of experience on the teams. Thankfully, the squid wasn't as dumb as he looked and knew when to keep his mouth shut and let a professional do all the talking.

They started off at the town hall, Larry explaining to the government official they met with that he had been asked to take a photographer for the fundacion out into the rainforest and he wanted to know if there was any areas he needed to keep his important guest away from.

From the town hall they went over to L'Policia, using the same story, the spy playing the over cautious scientist suddenly being put on the spot by having to guarantee the safety of a VIP. Satisfied that neither the Trinidad law enforcement nor the department of the interior had anything useful to pass on, Mr. Sizemore's next stop was on the edge of the city.

Driving the Jeep over to the airport, he parked it in long term parking and climbed out. "I'm not about to blow my cover for some little rich girl. I have a safe house nearby. We'll walk there and then head out. I have a couple of contacts who run adventure vacations and eco-trips. They talk to some of the groups we might be interested in."

"You think they'll help us?" Mr. Axe asked as they left the parking lot.

"Oh, I _know_ they'll help us." He grinned. "_I'm very_ good at getting people to open up."

It must have been something in his tone or maybe the way his cool blue eyes had lit up at the thought of interrogating those well-meaning, do-gooding eco activists who ran The Rainforest Trails Adventure Holidays Resort that caused the other man to grab his arm.

"What do you mean by that, _exactly_?"

"What do you think I mean, Sam?" He widened his eyes, a picture of hurt innocence.

_Now, listen up, when you're killing up close and personal, the first step is closing the gap without spooking your target. So, you practice getting that harmless, butter-wouldn't-melt-in-your-mouth expression, kid, until you can turn it on like flickin' a light switch._

Larry thoroughly enjoyed the look of contrition on the younger man's face as the SEAL back pedalled. "Jeez, I didn't mean that the way it came out. I guess I'm still a little jumpy from the last time time I was down this way."

"Ohhhh, so you were part of the clean-up crew that helped create my job opening. Talk around the water cooler was that a team of SEAL's had to come in and clean up the Rangers' mess." Larry waited to see if his new friend would take the bait.

"Look pal, that RUMIT turned out to be bad. The guy here before you almost got an _entire_ Ranger team wiped out, just one man left standing at the end, and the hostages were almost killed."

"Well, I'm not like that, Sam. I've been in this business for years and, _trust me_, when I ask questions, I check out the intel before I pass it on."

He patted the SEAL on the arm, while inwardly his opinion of Lt. Commander Axe was dropping fast. _The man was entirely too easy to goad into divulging details of a classified operation and was also apparently a bleeding heart boy scout to boot. _He looked at his wrist watch.

"C'mon, my safe house is just up the road here. I've got a fresh set of wheels inside and enough guns that we could start our own war if we wanted to." _Of course, if the frogman continued to be a pain in the ass... Once they were out in the wilds, unfortunate accidents could and did happen all the time_.

The safe house was in fact a large storeroom behind the ruins of an old church. The priest, who presided over the place of worship which had been built to replace the tumbled down original, was happy to allow the American scientist a place to keep his tools of the trade. After all, the man was working to give the community fresh water and helping improve the quality of the soil to grow their crops.

"Okay, help yourself to anything you might need." Larry pulled aside a heavy curtain made of tarpaulin to expose boxes of armaments and explosives. "I'm just gonna grab a few necessities."

As the spy made his way to the back of the room to the spot where he kept a bag hidden with what he considered essentials for a foray into hostile territory, he kept one eye on the younger man.

Sam Axe stood gazing at the rifle rack, which covered most of one wall, holding a selection of weapons from SIG SG 540s, the Bolivian army's assault rifle of choice, to AK-74s from Russia and the M16s favored by US forces.

"You weren't lying when you said there were enough guns to start a war." The taller man chuckled appreciatively. He turned his attention from the rifles to study the boxes of ammunition stacked up neatly on the work bench under the racks and then did a double take when he noticed two large crates sitting apart from the guns.

"You have claymores _and..._ are those fragmentation grenades?" the SEAL inquired, lifting the lid of the wooden crate to peer inside.

"Working in places like this, you never know what you might need." Larry reappeared, tossing his bag onto the back seat next to the navy-issued rucksack. Then, following up by throwing an assault rifle and several boxes of ammunition in to join the rest of their supplies, the spy continued to speak. "So, I like to be ready for _any_ eventuality. You know what they say, _always be prepared_."

Larry smiled to himself as the sarcasm sailed over his companion's head. Grabbing a set of keys off a nearby hook, he tossed them over to the muscle bound man in question. "You drive, I'll navigate."

The new set of wheels was another open topped Jeep; this one though wasn't bright, shiny or covered with company logos. Sam slid behind the wheel and then, following the older man's directions, drove away from the city, and its reasonably passable roads, out into the wildness. As he navigated the treacherous dirt tracks, his host filled him in with all he knew about their first port of call.

"They're really nothing more than a bunch of eco-warrior wannabes," the spy spoke with thinly veiled scorn. "Josh Prentiss is a spoiled little rich kid doing his best to piss off his loaded conservative parents and his girlfriend, Davina Munroe, isn't much better. Her mommy is a left wing journalist for some British newspaper and her daddy writes articles about depleting the ozone layer and crap like that. The place is run more like a commune than a business."

"And you think a bunch of rich kids will have the inside scoop on the local criminal underworld?" Sam replied, his tone showing what he thought of that idea.

"Well, _Chuck_, care to explain how _you_ think these losers get to stay out here _unmolested_ without paying some sort of protection?"

"So, we're going after the name of the guy they're paying off?" the navy man replied as he worked on keeping the heavy vehicle on the pothole plagued excuse for a road.

"Exactly... Now, they know me as good ol' Hector Neumann, a fellow tree hugger and friend of the forest, so I want you to stay back and _try_ to look menacing. Think you can pull that off, _Chucky_?"

"Uh-huh, you're gonna play the good guy desperate for their help and if they don't play ball, the big bad guy lurking in the background is gonna rain down hell on them and you."

"You got it, buddy." The dark haired spy beamed happily and then pointed to an even narrower trail on the left hand side of the road. "Turn down there and just watch out for snakes and spiders fallin' on your head."

The entrance to the Rainforest Adventure Trails was an archway made out of a vines being trailed between two tall trees, behind which was a large flat clearing ringed by several large tents and one badly maintained shack.

Stopping next to two other vehicles, Sam climbed out and made a big show of repositioning his Beretta, which up until that moment had been concealed by his loose fitting shirt. Two twenty-somethings, who had witnessed their entrance, scooted off to no doubt to inform the rest of the inhabitants they were about to be invaded by a hostile force.

"Just remember the more badass _you are_, the less work _I'll_ have to do... Toss one of the grenades at that shack they call a clubhouse if you think they're not taking me seriously enough." Sucking in a deep breath, the spy held it for a second before letting it out and rushing towards the group of young people who had quickly gathered at their arrival.

"Hey! Hey, dudes, we gotta a problem. I need your help." He raised a hand and gestured back to where Axe was leaning back against the Jeep, his arms folded over his chest and a death glare on his face.

Josh, Davina and the rest of their little group put up a good argument. Mr. Prentiss was a very opinionated and vocal young man who didn't hesitate for a second to threaten they would report both their _friend_ Hector and the CIA black ops guy with him to the Bolivian government. Before long, the whole group joined in and began to scream about their civil rights being violated.

At which point, Larry had reminded them that they were a long way from the city and the government they suddenly loved so much. Also, the CIA guy standing by the Jeep only had to get on the radio and their little adventure trail business would end up nothing more than a smouldering hole in the ground.

"Look, all he wants is the name of the guy you all pay protection to. Nobody has to get _hurt._ But hey, you _know_ what the CIA is like... You _really_ want to _die_ just for one name? I tell you, _that man_ is a stone cold killer."

In less than a minute, he was walking back towards the Jeep with the name of his next target, doing his best to resist the urge to turn around and empty his gun it to the group of entitled sons of bitches.

_If he had been alone, if he wasn't stuck with a god damned male version of Mother Teresa, if he wasn't desperate to make this mission a resounding success..._ By the time he reached the SEAL, the covert operatives jaw was clenched so tightly he couldn't speak.

"You okay there, buddy?" Sam asked, staring at the stony faced spy. Then when he got no response to his question, he tried again to get the older man to talk. "So, they give you anything useful?"

"Oh, yes..." Larry finally managed to unlock his teeth and move his mandible. "They hand over two thousand boliviano every week to Miguel Santiago or to one of his men," he announced as he climbed back into the Jeep.

"And you know this Miguel?" Mr. Axe pressed for more information as he turned the key in the ignition.

"Miguel Santiago is a ghost. He lives in the forest with maybe two dozen followers. But I know his older brother, Carlos, owns a small farm not too far from here. I've been out there a couple of times. He has a nice little opium field hidden away in the forest. He caught me taking a look one day. But once he realized I was only interested in collecting soil samples, the old bastard left me alone."

_Sometimes letting people know how strong you are will getcha into a fight you can't win. You either run or you back down. So you better learn to hide your pride and let them push you around... Until a more opportune moment presents itself, that is. Remember, kid, sometimes you have to let the asshole live. He might turn out to be useful one day. If not, you can always take him out another day._

Stuttering out pleas for his life and falling down on the soft leaf litter covered ground of the jungle floor before an elderly farmer armed with a shotgun had not been a good day for the master assassin. But, breaking the neck of a well-known and beloved old man would have brought too much attention his way. So playing his cover ID to hilt had been the only path left open to him.

"And if this Miguel has the girl, you think you can use the brother to negotiate a deal?"

"Maybe… Turn right once we're back at the main road and follow the trail up the hill. Let's see what el viejo cabron has to say."

They found Carlos sitting under the thatched canopy which ran the full length of the front of his white painted stone farmhouse. The old man had obviously received a warning of their approach as on the table in front of him was a large jug and three cups.

"Senor Neumann, bien venido, and you have brought a friend with you... I hope you haven't brought your photographer friend to take pictures of my fields." He chuckled softly as he leaned forward to pour some of the clear liquid from the jug into the cups. "Come, have a drink with me. You are most welcome, amigos."

"Gracias, Señor, a drink in this heat would be most welcome," Larry answered smoothly, gesturing for Sam to pull up a chair too. Finding out who Santiago's contact was in either L'policia or City Hall was something the spy would look into later. Right now, he had a revolutionary to find.

It took an hour of friendly chat covering every subject from the weather to how well the local soccer team of Real Mamoré had played in recent matches while drinking the illegally brewed casquito.

"I heard an interesting rumor about an American girl who's gone missing. Some say she's wandered into this district. I don't suppose you've heard anything about that?" Mr. Sizemore watched the old man's face for a hint of guilt.

"Gee, I bet her family must be worried sick," Sam added. "Say, what do you think the chances are there's a reward of some sort out for her safe return?"

"Yeah, though I'm more concerned about what might happen if she isn't returned... er, _sorry,_ found soon. If the Americans decide to send in a force to find her, I don't think there'd be a tree left standing in the whole district."

Both spy and SEAL turned to stare at the old man as Señor Santiago laughed at them.

Carlos pointed one gnarled finger at Larry and managed to talk in between the chuckles. "I – win... I told Miguel there – was more to you – than a scientist." Then the laughter stopped and he leaned forward. "I tried to look up that chemical you said was contaminating the local water – it does not exist... You are not who you seem, Señor Neumann."

_When your cover's being tested, experienced spies know to play the role even harder. But __**very**__ experienced spies know there's times when putting on the performance of your life is only going to shorten your time here on this earth._

"Does it really matter who I am, Carlos? All you really need to know is I'm not interested in what you grow in your fields." He fixed the elderly farmer with a stare that would leave the old man no doubt of what would happen if he refused to help. He just hoped that the Boy Scout at his side would keep his damn mouth shut during these delicate negotiations.

"Sola la chica?" the wizened senior demanded fiercely.

"Si, all we want to know is where to find the girl."

Both Larry and Sam waited as the aged Bolivian thought about the repercussions of not helping the two gringos.

"I know who is holding the Americana... I can lead you to their camp; they are no friends of mine."

The Company man flashed his teeth in a genuine smile. _Man, I really am that good_, he thought as he congratulated himself on a job well done. In less than a day, he'd have the whole mission wrapped up tight. This would show the doubters back at Langley that even after being shot and losing a partner, Larry Sizemore was still at the top of his game.

"You show us where she is and _we'll_ make sure you get that reward," Lt. Commander Axe added as an extra incentive.

Less than ten minutes later, they were driving away from the farm following the directions supplied by Sr. Santiago, who sat grousing in the back seat, clinging to the roll bar as Larry took over the driving. Finally though, they reached a point in the forest where the dense foliage and uneven root covered ground meant they had to abandon the vehicle and continue on foot.

From there on the trio walked, slipped and at times fought their way through the tangle of branches and long trailing vines. Eventually, after what felt like miles, their elderly guide held up a hand and then gestured for them to follow in silence.

There below them was a well-organized camp, containing heavily armed men, several women and even small children and right slap bang in the middle was a prone figure curled up on her side, the young woman they were looking for.

"Well, we've found her." Larry pointed out the obvious. "I say we empty out my safe house and come back in the middle of the night, set a few charges to act as a distraction and go in there shooting."

"Are you crazy?" the younger man hissed angrily. "No, I'm gonna call in a team. This is too risky for the two of us. They can fly in, drop down and use the element of surprise to get the girl and get out fast, easy peasy. There's women and children in that camp. _I don't_ make war on kids. The threat of a Black Hawk and a full team of SEALs should be enough to keep things nice 'n' peaceable."

What Sam Axe suggested was a safe, sane plan which would achieve the objective of the saving the girl, but Mr. Sizemore was after more. He hadn't wasted a day crawling around in the rainforest just to rescue some rich bitch who didn't know how to look after herself.

The undercover agent turned the full force of his personality on in an effort to convince the man at his side to do things his way. So, the Boy Scout didn't want to shoot up a camp full of women and kids? Well, there was other ways to do things.

"You order a military gunship to fly over and you'll stir up the whole region. How about I go back and talk to Carlos? Maybe he has some influence with this group. I might be able to work out something that'll keep US military activity in a foreign country to a minimum."

Lt. Commander Axe stared at him, distrust evident in his narrowed brown eyes and the scowl twisting his lips. "Work out what, exactly? That camp is too well armed and neigh on impossible to approach on foot for any sort of ground incursion."

"Leave it to me." Mr Sizemore backed away, tapping Carlos on the arm to get the old man to follow his lead and force the SEAL to stay with them. "In case it's slipped your mind, Sam, I'm a spy. Getting people to do what I want is part of the job description. I'm gonna drop you back at the hotel so you get back to what you do best while I work out a way of getting that girl out of there in one piece."

They left Señor Santiago back at his farm with a promise that once they got the hostage away from the group in the forest, he would be well rewarded for his help. Larry insisted on staying behind the wheel and taking his sulking passenger back to the city.

"We're supposed to working as a team here. Now you're going off on your own? I want to know what you've got up your sleeve there, fella, and don't even think about pulling an extraction without me," Sam growled out as the Jeep came to a stop outside the hotel.

"Jeez, what have I done to make you so untrusting? I'm just trying to bring this whole mission to an end and get that poor young lady back to her loved ones."

The two men locked eyes in a staring competition, until the spy broke the stand-off by reaching over the back of his chair, grabbing the SEAL's rucksack and throwing into his lap. "I'd hurry up if I were you. Happy hour in Trinidad's nearly over. You'll end up having to pay full price for your beer."

At long last, Axe got the message and climbed out of the Jeep. "I mean it, _Hector_. I expect to see you back here in a couple of hours. You don't want me to have to rat you out to the _home office_, now do you?"

"I'll be back soon enough. Just make sure you don't catch anything – infectious while I'm gone." Larry pulled away from the curb before the younger man could respond.

That evening he returned to the Santiago farm and, holding a gun to Carlos' head, he urged the old man to pick up the radio and contact his little brother. As soon as he heard Miguel answer his sibling's call for help, he cold-cocked the elderly farmer and began to explain his idea for an exciting new partnership in southernmost reaches of the Amazon Basin.

**()()()()()**

It was just before dawn the following day when the spy and the SEAL returned to the spot overlooking the kidnappers' camp. Below them, all was quiet, a few skinny dogs mooched about searching for scraps of food they might have missed during the night and, next to a fire which had all but burnt out, the prisoner sat huddled under a thin sheet of tarpaulin to protect her from the early morning dew covering the ground.

"So, are you gonna explain why you didn't want me involved when you caught up with Miguel?" Sam spoke in a hushed tone.

"Are you still whining about that? Honestly, I told you, I work better alone. That's why I'm a spy and you, you obviously prefer working as part of team and that's why you're a SEAL. Now, let it go."

Lt. Commander Axe opened his mouth and then shut it without uttering a word. The camp was suddenly coming to life. Men were exiting the tents, calling out to each other and grabbing up their weapons. The young woman was dragged to her feet and unceremoniously thrown into the nearest shelter.

"Er, you might want to get ready for a bit of action," Larry advised as he loosen his pistol in its holster before taking a firm grip on the AK-74 he had brought along.

Pursing his lips, Sam did as his companion suggested without taking his eyes off the camp. A small group of heavily armed newcomers entered the clearing, calling out greetings of friendship.

"That your guy?"

"Yes, Sam, now pay attention. Things are about to get interesting."

Down in the camp, the talking came to an abrupt halt as the leader of this new group suddenly produced a TEC-9 from the folds of his coat and shot the chief kidnapper in the head while at the same moment more men flooded into the camp armed with assault rifles.

Sam swore as the scene became one of carnage, as both sides shot holes in each other. "C'mon, swabbie, time to earn your pay check!"

And with that, Larry leapt to his feet and, much to the younger man's horror, threw one of the fragmentation grenades he had seen in the safe house straight into the area containing the bulk of the defenders.

"Damn it!"

But the spy wasn't listening, because with the sound of men dying ringing in his ears and the smell of gunpowder all about, the undercover agent was at his best. _This was what he lived for, what he was made for: commanding chaos, prospering from death and destruction_. It was the one time he could truly be himself and let go of all of the suppressed rage and darkness which filled his soul.

Agent Sizemore paid no attention to what the frogman was doing. His sole purpose was to reach the target and get her clear of the fighting and he killed everybody who got in his way. When he reached the young woman, he ignored her screams of terror and carried her over his shoulder.

"Doesn't it make you feel alive?" In the midst of the battle, Larry called out to the man who was covering their target and his retreat. "There's nothin' like a fire fight to make you appreciate breathing." As they exited the clearing, the spy threw his last grenade at the combatants, not really caring if it took out friend or foe.

Reaching the spot where they had hidden their Jeep, the dark haired man dropped the no longer screaming but still sobbing girl down into the back seat.

"Sam, we need to get outta here _now_." Larry fired back into the rainforest and only got into the passenger seat once his companion had gotten the vehicle started.

"What the hell was that?" the SEAL shouted, his eyes flickering from the road ahead and then to checking behind them.

"Hey, everything worked out, didn't it? Quit your whining. You know what, Axe? You really _are_ a wet rag. We got the girl and now Miguel back there will take control of this whole district and because _we_ helped to set up his biggest rival and gave _him_ the extra fire power he needed, our new amigo's back there has agreed to leave our mineral survey teams alone. It's what's known as a win-win for us."

**()()()()()**

Seeing to it that the kidnap victim was now back in the loving arms of her family and that Sam Axe had departed for places unknown, Larry had been forced to wait a week until he could get a meeting with his boss, Station Chief Steven Morales. There had been no love lost between the two men.

Now sitting facing the man who held his fate in his hands, the covert operative was impatient to hear if he was going to be allowed to transfer out of the South American region and back into an area more suited to his expertise. He wasn't the least bit interested in Morales' questions about the mission and was annoyed that the trained seal the brass had stuck him with didn't seem to have a stomach for violence. How the hell had a man that squeamish gotten into a Special Forces unit?

"He did say the body count was a little high for what was supposed to be a covert mission."

"Since when do you make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, am I right?" Larry laughed. "The whole region's been stabilized and our new best friend is going to see to it that it'll stay that way. What does Washington care if some crazy revolutionaries shoot each other up?"

"No, no, it was a fine job. You did a great job for us here, Larry. Are you sure you want to move on? I'd have to take you out of Trinidad any way, but how about Costa Rica? Or I could open up a chance for you to work in Panama? we could always use somebody like you there."

"I appreciate the offer, but -"

"You do know Russia is still out of the question? I have it on your file. That was a nasty business." He pulled out another folder. "If you really insist on leaving, but the only position I've been authorized to offer you is Iraq."

"Iraq?" The assassin thought quickly his mind sifting through what he knew of the region.

"Yes, seems some very unpleasant things going on there. So you see, Panama would be a better choice."

Station Chief Morales might have at one time been a top flight operator, but he hadn't been out in the field for decades. Soft and fat, he was used to the safety of a desk and a several layers of security surrounding at all times. Larry could never imagine living like that. Panama might be a better choice for some people like Morales. But there was a war brewing in the Middle East, which meant lots of opportunities for a man like himself.

"If it's all the same to you, sir, I'll take the transfer to Iraq. I have to go where I can be the most service to my country after all."

Larry chuckled internally as the Station Chief swallowed it hook, line and sinker_. I just get better with age_, he congratulated himself.

"I've always preferred the desert to the jungle, anyway."

Iraq was one step closer to where he wanted to get back to and, one way or another, Larry Sizemore always got what he wanted.


	3. Kut Iraq 1989

**A/N:** _Welcome to the third installment in the __Life with Larry __series and Sam Axe's second run in with the Lord of Darkness. Luckily for our favorite SEAL, after this mission Sam won't be seeing his un-favorite covert operative for another three years (or in four weeks from now as the story rolls out). Next week, we will learn how and where Mr. Sizemore met the man who would become his apprentice for a time, Michael Westen._

_For those of you looking for some Michael and Fiona goodness more along the lines of Puppies, Kittens & Gun Toting Babies, then you will be happy to know that starting on Monday, July 7th at 10 PM, Jedi's Pal will be launching a second series, a prequel of sorts to the __re-imagined happily-ever-after scenarios for each of the season finales__. This new story, called __Be Brave Little Angel__, will tell the tale of what might have happened if Michael hadn't left Fiona behind in Ireland and the pair had run away together for obvious reasons._

_Be Brave Little Angel will be posting on Mondays at 10 PM and running concurrent with Life with Larry, which will be continuing on Thursdays at 10 PM. So, two fresh installments of **Burn Notice** each week to chase away those We Ain't Got No S8 Blues! July 7th will be here soon :) Meanwhile, __Larry and Sam's story continues..._

**()()()()()()()**

**Kut, Iraq 1989**

"_THIEVES! INFIDELS!_"

The shouts rang out loud and clear, echoing in the dead of the night along the dark deserted streets of the Iraqi city of Kut and, not for the first time during their five months of working together, Larry Sizemore regretted the day he had decided to take on Eric Stratton as a partner.

Having taken down two of the men he had discovered attacking his comrade with his curved and wickedly sharp Karambit blade, the covert operative and part time assassin had turned his attention to the remaining three men who were trying to force the beaten and battered Agent Stratton into the trunk of a waiting car.

However, all the shrieks, screams and general sounds of violence were already attracting the attention the locals and stealth was longer necessary. As more and more people were coming to their doors, the words "_KILLERS! MURDERERS!_" were being added to the cries of the attackers and the rapidly gathering mob.

Mr. Sizemore cursed the whole of Iraq and its people, but mostly the damned idiot he had saddled himself with because this particular job had been considered too dangerous for a lone agent. Swinging his AK74 around from where it had been hanging on its strap, he fired off a salvo of shots along the narrow street, driving the nosy locals back into their homes before turning his weapon onto the vehicle and the men Eric was desperately fighting to get away from.

Unable to get a clear shot on the struggling group, Larry was about to cut his losses and kill them all when Stratton somehow managed to throw off his attackers and break free, staggering towards him. "We gotta go, Lare... C'mon, man, hurry!"

Retreating in the face of a growing hostile force, the two American agents laid down a torrent of gunfire to cover their retreat. "Pick up the pace, Eric, or I'll leave you behind," the senior spy growled as his beaten comrade stumbled and nearly fell.

"Doing my best, buddy... Jeez, I thought I was a goner there an' just when I found where our -"

A bullet whistled by Larry, so close it left a burn mark on his shirt sleeve, before embedding itself in the torso of the other covert operative, ending his words and sending his body straight down to the ground.

Agent Sizemore returned fire, spraying bullets the full width of the narrow street, emptying the weapon in an effort to force the mob back. "Can you move?" he called over his shoulder as he hurriedly reloaded. "Eric, can you move?"

His only answer at first was a gasping cough and a groan. But then as he was beginning to think about ending the other man's misery with a bullet to the head, Eric Stratton said something that would keep his partner at his side.

"Y-y-you gotta get – get me outta here... I- I f-found wh- what we're lo-oking for." Blood was bubbling out from between his lips and his eyes rolling back in their sockets as he fought to stay conscious. "I know – know where al Harzari is – "

That one sentence changed everything as far as Larry was concerned. His associate was no longer an expendable liability, at least not while he held the information which would help bring down the terrorist they had been sent to find and eliminate.

Grim faced, the cold blooded spy let his rifle drop so it hung by its shoulder strap, exchanging it for his handgun which would be easier to use. In one smooth move, he dragged his battered colleague to his feet and threw him over his shoulder.

"You c-can't leave me, Lare—" the injured agent gasped. "I- I got the intel – f-five months work blown if y-you -. You n-need to call an ex-fil."

"I know what I need to do, Eric. Shut the hell up... First, we need to find some place to hide."

His gun was empty again and it was time to move. Ejecting the spent clip, he slammed in his last remaining one. But before the dark haired man could take more than a few steps, the dead weight literally hanging around his neck shifted and nearly caused him to fall.

"Keep the fuck still," he snarled.

"Use this..." Eric moved again, despite what he'd been told. "I – was savin' it – for a – rainy day."

Larry took the large brick of C-4 from the junior agent's hand and instantly dismissed the proffered gift. "It's useless without a detonator."

"No, you idiot – bullets, press bullets in – to – it and – set it a- alight... Breathing space, man."

"I knew I kept you around for something." The senior operative began to pick up his speed. Now that he had a chance to create a bit of distance between them and their pursuers, he just needed to time to prepare the explosive for use. "We're heading for the river. Think you can hold on that long?"

"Sure, do I have a choice?" the wounded man retorted.

"Good. Any of those bastards following us get close enough, shoot 'em. You got it, pal?"

"Got it."

Running as fast as he could with the added weight, Larry ducked down alley ways and used every trick he could think of to put a bit more space between him and the unknown assailants chasing after them.

Finally, the sound of angry Persian voices faded into the background and the spy decided that this was going to be his now-or-never moment. The mob would soon be back following the bloody trail left by Eric, who was bleeding like a stuck pig, but hopefully not until after he had pushed the last of his ammo into the C-4.

Shrugging off his passenger, Agent Sizemore propped the heavy body against the nearest wall before giving his partner a cursory once over. The bullet, which had narrowly missed him, had hit Eric on the right side just below the ribs. The experienced operative was already thinking about all the organs which might have been damaged as he did a quick study of the hemorrhaging wound.

"I'm a mess," Stratton groaned as he tried to halt the crimson flow with his hands.

"Who's after you, Eric? You know 'em?" Larry asked as he concentrated on pressing the last of his 9-mm rounds into the piece of ordinance.

"Th-there was a sweet – and I mean, re-al sweet th-ing in Baghdad..." Even with a hole in his side, the covert agent managed a leering smile as he spoke. "I- couldn't resist, man."

"A woman? You nearly wrecked a mission over a piece of ass?" It took all Larry's limited self control not to stuff the explosive into his idiot of a partner's mouth and light it. Instead, he ground his teeth together and, not for the first time, wished his old partner Brick was still alive. As least Mr. Breeland had known how to keep his mind on the job.

But the mob had found their trail again. He could hear their voices getting louder. Digging out his trusty zippo, he set the block of volatile material on fire and tossed it around the corner and onto the street they had just traveled along.

"On your feet, Eric. We've gotta go." He hauled the injured man to his feet and half carrying, half dragging him, they set off just as a staccato of shots rang out. The burning C-4 set off the gunpowder in the bullets, sending the lethal projectiles out in all directions and covering their retreat into the unlit maze which made up the warehouse district next to the River Tigris.

Hiding Stratton amongst a stack of pallets and covering him with an old piece of tarpaulin, Larry took off to cover their tracks. Once he was satisfied that the few die-hards left among their pursuers were going in the wrong direction, he returned to find Eric had finally lost the battle to stay awake.

Taking out his emergency radio, Agent Sizemore twisted the dial until he found the correct channel and, as much as it stuck in his craw to have to ask the nearest naval command for assistance, he called for an emergency extraction.

"_We have your coordinates. It'll be fifteen minutes to ex-fil. Don't move. We'll come to you."_

Fifteen minutes to sit and wait was fifteen minutes too long as far as the covert operative was concerned. Hastily frisking his unconscious colleague, Larry came to the conclusion that Eric hadn't risked bringing the much needed intel out with him. He was going to have to wait until his partner woke up to discover what the other had found out.

Sitting back, the older man found himself staring at the slightly younger face, which was so strikingly similar to his own.

_He had first heard the name Eric Stratton upon leaving Station Chief Morales' office after handing in the report from his mission with Sam Axe. As he had been making his way out of the US consulate building in the regions' capital city of La Paz, he had heard the rapid clack of stiletto heels on a marble floor coming up behind him and half turned, only to run into a stinging slap to his cheek._

"_You bastard, Eric Stratton! Do you think you can - Oh! Oh, oh my god! I am sooo sorry." The pretty blonde had gone from homicidal fury to apologizing profusely in a heartbeat. "I never –. You- well, you look just like..." Her words faded away as she'd lowered her gaze and blushed._

_He had raked her over with his eyes, not his type. Too pretty, too soft and most likely too dumb to hold his interest for more than an hour. "Miss, I think you made a mistake."_

"_I see that now, but wow! You could be Eric's double, same -" She had blushed again as her eyes flickered over his features and frame. "Well, same everything. You don't have an evil twin, do you?"_

_Something had clicked in his head at that moment. Somebody who looked just like him... That had been a very interesting turn of events. Evelyn Salt, the famed Russian assassin might or might not be after him. A body double would be an excellent way of finding out if he was still persona non grata in his favorite city._

_He had flashed his killer smile, "No, no evil twin... Say, why don't I take you out for dinner tonight, my dear, and you can tell me all about it... I'm a great listener."_

_By the end of the evening, he had learned all he needed to approach Station Chief Morales and suggest a solution as to what to do with a troublesome field agent and womanizer who was rapidly making his way through all the female employees of the US consulate._

The soft pad of multiple fast moving feet pulled Larry out of his reverie and, shifting his rifle around, he prepared to open fire when he caught sight of two men in full combat gear moving swiftly in his direction. Letting his gun drop, he slowly rose up with his hands held high.

"About time you guys showed up... We gotta a man down here."

**()()()()()**

As soon as he had set foot on the USS Nassau, Larry had requested a secure line to report to his Station Chief. If Eric had in fact gotten the information which could lead directly to Abdul al Harzari, he wanted to make sure he had the clearance to act since taking matters into his own hands was no longer an option thanks to Stratton.

_It had been all over the news that a group from the United Nations on a fact finding tour of the region was inviting all the great and the good in the city of Kut to a dinner party. That had given the spy the opening he had been waiting for. At least one of the city's wealthiest men had to be involved in al Harzari's rise as a terrorist. Somebody had to be supplying the group with the arms and the intelligence to carry out his attacks on both Iraqi army patrols and the UN Peacekeeping forces in the area. _

_While the US had no problems with the man keeping the Iraqi Army on their side of the border, aggression against the multinational troops on the ground overseeing the situation would not be tolerated and al Harzari's plans were rumored to include even larger scale operations over a wider area on the Iranian side of the border as well._

_So, with the majority of the suspects attending the party, Larry and Eric had gone on a breaking and entering spree in search of the evidence they needed. But as the night had gone on and time had been running out without finding anything useful, Larry had made the decision for them to split up and that was when Eric had fallen victim to the family of a woman who had tracked the over sexed spy all the way from Baghdad._

"Stay put until Stratton wakes up," Station Chief Shanks had ordered. "It's the safest place for you at the moment after the shit storm you've unleashed in Kut... If Stratton has anything useful to say when he comes around, we'll need a SEAL team to wrap this thing up anyway."

"A SEAL team?" He had blinked and been grateful his up-line couldn't see his face at that moment. _He didn't want any help, especially not from a bunch of boy scouts._

"You didn't really expect to go poking your nose in around in bandit country on your own without back up, did you? Now that you've kicked the hornet's nest and all hell's broken loose on the ground, I've already spoken to the SEAL commander on the Nassau. He's got a team on standby... My advice is stay put until Stratton is out of surgery and you get his intel so we can make a targeted strike instead of going on another hunting expedition."

But, as it turned out, Larry had only just made it to his assigned berth on the battleship when a sharp knock to the door had him heading back out, following a young ensign along the narrow hallways and up and down the tight staircases. The commander of the SEAL team on board the Nassau had requested his presence at a briefing.

_Typical,_ the spy thought as he ducked through yet another hatch. The squids were going to be discussing tactics and running through scenarios when they should be waiting until they had all the facts.

Finally reaching his destination, the ensign held the door open for him to enter and then closed it behind him. "Agent Sizemore, good of you to join us. I'm Commander Krell and this is the team you'll be working with."

Larry looked past the commander as he introduced the team and found himself staring straight at the man he had worked with less than six months earlier on a different continent.

"Lieutenant Commander Sam Axe, who I believe you've worked with before, Lt. Lance Farley, our communications officer, and Ensigns John Shafer and Charlie Garber."

"Pleased to meet you guys." Larry flashed his perfect smile. "But aren't you jumping the gun, fellas, unless you're here to tell me my partner's already in recovery?"

"Negative, Agent Stratton is still in surgery." Commander Krell walked over to the table where the rest of his men stood waiting for the briefing to begin. "While he was being prepped for surgery, a medic found a sheet of paper tucked into one of his socks. He passed it on up the line and it came to me."

"Any intelligence that was found should have be handed over to me, Commander." The practiced smile fell away as Larry interrupted. _Dammit, how the hell had he missed that?_ "I should -"

"The paper was hand written coordinates, _Agent _Sizemore. Bringing it to me just saved us a lot of time," Krell answered back in a tone that left the spy in no doubt his insolence would not be tolerated a second time. Pointing to a location on one of the many maps laid out on the table, the Commander continued.

"This is the area your partner indicated. It's a remote location about thirty klicks from the border with Iran. There doesn't appear to be any real roads into the area and the most recent satellite photos doesn't show any structures aside from a coupla goat herder shacks.. at least that's what they look like from the air."

Larry studied the map and then picked up the satellite images, running his eye over the pictures looking for any signs of an encampment that the SEAL team might have missed.

"You spot something with your super spy vision we missed, Larry?" Sam Axe spoke up.

The covert operative took a moment to school his features into a neutral expression, carefully disguising his growing loathing for both of these naval commanders before shaking his head negativity.

"I've ordered a drone fly over to get us some up to date telemetry. If there's anybody dug in up there, we should know it in the next hour. If there _is _a viable target, you'll be going in at sundown and traveling dark until you reach the objective." Commander Krell turned to the team leader. "Axe, help Agent Sizemore get kitted out... I take it you have had parachute training?" This last part was directed to the spy, who just nodded back.

Larry had remained quiet, not wanting to admit it had been several years since he'd had to be dropped from the air into anywhere. Working in Russia and the other Soviet Bloc countries had mostly involved traveling on trains or sneaking across borders by car or on foot. He knew if he divulged that piece of information, Commander Krell would pull him from the mission on safety grounds.

"C'mon, Lare, let's get you your kit and then I'll show you the mess hall." Sam Axe slapped him on the back, maybe a bit harder than would normally be considered friendly. "Though you might want to go light on the chow if ya haven't jumped for a while."

**()()()()()**

It was two hours later that they got the word. The telemetry from the drone had been received and analysed. Back in the SEAL's briefing room, Larry was now cleaned up after a quick shower and dressed in clothing identical to the rest of the battle ready team.

"So, here are the details." Commander Krell wasted no time in handing each of the five men present a set of photographs. "As you can see, there is a compound and it's a large one. From the rows of tents and trucks lined up, it looks to be a pretty well supplied one too. But there's no way from these shots to figure out whether it is al Harzari's group or an unofficial refugee camp for Kurds fleeing the fighting. So you're gonna have to get close enough to check it out."

Krell paused and took a breath before continuing. "And this comes from higher up the food chain, gentlemen. Because of the, and I quote, _delicate situation_ in the region, you'll need to confirm al Harzari is on site before setting up the guidance system. Washington will only authorize a strike if it's to take out a legitimate threat to the peacekeepers in the region."

"So, what's the plan here, sir?" Sam asked as he continued to study the photographs. "It looks like a lotta open ground to cover."

"A Sea King is being prepped for the insertion. You're gonna fly in under both the Iraqi and Iranian radar and then LALO to the LZ. Harzari is known to have the weapons capability to take out aircraft, so you'll be dropped fifty miles from your target. You'll then be travelling on foot under the cover of darkness, resting up as soon as it gets light. Our analysis of the ground is that if you make to this point..."

Krell reverted to using the large, detailed map on the table. "You'll be able to stay out of sight until nightfall and make the objective before daybreak... Then _only_ _after_ you have _confirmed_ al Harzari is in the camp, call in and set up the laser. We'll be on standby from 05.00 hours on your second day. Are we clear?" He turned to the CIA agent who had listened to the briefing without making a sound. "Any questions, Agent Sizemore?"

Larry looked around the room. This was not how he would have chosen to go after the man who had been a ghost to him for the last five months. A missile attack was too impersonal for the covert operative's taste. _However, under the circumstances..._

"No, Sir." He flashed his pearly whites. "As clear as day."

**()()()()()**

"So, what's up, Sammy?" Lieutenant Lance Farley slapped his long time team mate on the shoulder. "You've been as jumpy as a virgin on her wedding night ever since that spook came aboard. You two got history?"

Sam pursed his lips while trying to decide how to best describe his feelings for the dark haired CIA agent. Sizemore was good at his job. That wasn't the problem. It was more like the longer he spent in the presence of the spy, the more Larry made his skin crawl.

"We worked together a few months back. He knows how to get the job done, I will say that for the guy," was the best he could come with, though he knew it wouldn't be enough for the other man.

"Jeez, that bad, huh? Hey, I'm all for, if you can't say anything nice..."

"It's nothing, Lance. Truth is, he got the job done. Maybe not _exactly_ how I woulda done it, but the brass was happy enough... Now, let's get going before we get left behind."

Sam increased his pace along the tight narrow hallway. The fact that Farley had picked up on his dislike for Sizemore was not good, especially as part of his job as team leader was to ensure they all worked together as a cohesive unit. He was going to have to make more of an effort to put aside his feelings regarding the spy.

At least this time it wasn't going to be Larry calling the shots; he still had a bad taste in his mouth every time he thought about how his last mission in the Bolivian jungle ended.

_Twelve dead, the girl they had been sent to rescue severely traumatized and later on more of the kidnappers had been executed so Miguel Santiago could consolidate his position of power amongst the paramilitary and revolutionary groups in the district. Both the CIA and the Pentagon had seen the situation as a win. They now had a friendly contact in the southernmost reaches of the Amazon rainforest, a man so grateful for the weapons he had been given that he was happy to guarantee the safety of the US mineral survey teams who had been itching to get into the region. No, thank God this time Larry would be operating under his authority and with one clear objective. There would be no sudden surprises or clandestine side deals this time_.

"Okey dokey, fellas, let's get set up." Sam went through the door which led into the armory. "They're gonna want us up on the flight deck by 17:00 hours. Shafer, you'll be carrying the guidance system and make sure you don't drop it... Larry, you got everything you need?"

**()()()()()**

Just as the sky was darkening, the five man team loaded down with equipment and parachutes climbed aboard the Sea King helicopter. Traveling fast, the chopper stayed close to the ground, flying past the City of Kut and out across the wide open arid landscape of the border lands.

It seemed to be in no time at all that the co-pilot lit up a warning light to let his passengers know it was nearly time to disembark. Sam watched as his team lined up at the exit to the twin rotor aircraft.

Getting to his feet, he moved to the back of the line, taking his position behind the spy, running his eye over Larry's equipment. His years of training plus his own moral code telling him to watch over the least experienced man under his command, even though he was damn sure if their positions were reversed that the older man would show no such concern for his well being.

It wasn't long before they were floating down towards the ground, each man keeping a wary eye out for anybody watching their descent. Away from the lights of the city, night came on fast and it was already dark enough that they were nearly invisible, only the sound of the chopper giving their location away.

As soon as they landed, the armed force gathered up their parachutes and hid the reams of silk as best they could along with the harnesses they had worn under nearby rocks and scrub bushes. Quickly forming up, they set off across the deserted stony landscape following Ensign Garber, whose map reading skills were considered legendary on the teams.

The ground was hard and covered in sharp rocks which moved under foot, making marching at speed without even so much as a flash light difficult and tiring. However, they made it to the designated rest stop before the sun had even began to peek up over the horizon. Finding a long narrow berm which would offer some much needed shade from the sun and scattered with straggly bushes to lie under while they waited for the safety of night time, the small squad set about making camp.

"How you holding up, Lare?" Sam asked. The spy was easily ten years older than himself and though obviously in shape, marching through the night after little sleep or food he guessed wasn't a normal activity for a field agent.

"Great, couldn't be better," came the terse reply as the older man selected his sleeping spot and dropped to the ground.

"Make sure you liquid up and eat something before you go to sleep. We'll split the watch between the five of us. You can go last."

The SEAL checked his Swiss Luminox watch. It was coming up on five am.

"Lance, you take first watch. Wake me up at 09:00. Schafer, you'll take over at 13:00 hours. Garber and Larry, you'll take over at 17:00 hours. Lare, you'll stand guard while Garber scouts the route ahead. We'll head out at 20:00 hours. Everybody got that?..." He noted the nods of assent. "We made thirty klicks already, so tonight is gonna be like a stroll in the park. You all know what to do, refuel and catch some Z's."

It seemed to Sam that he had barely closed his eyes when his second in command woke him by quietly calling out his name. "Axe-man, I've hadda a quick look see. There's a shack a half klick from here but nobody's around and it looks abandoned."

Sam yawned, nodded, then slowly got to his feet and stretched. There was no need for any more words. Leaving his friend and comrade in arms to get some much deserved rest, the SEAL commander did a cursory check on the rest of his team and then edged his way to just below the brow of the berm.

It was close to mid-day, in the last hour of his watch, that Sam first caught the sound of something small scrabbling over rocks. On alert, he moved from cover to cover as more sounds reached his ears. He swore silently under his breath. It had been too good to be true. A faultless drop, a relatively easy march in country and the hope that after another night march, they would reach the target._ Easy peasy, my ass_. _When did any incursion ever go __exactly__ as planned_.

A skinny goat came into sight, lightly skipping from rock to rock, followed by another and then another. Hurriedly reversing, the Lt. Commander reached the site and woke each man in turn, putting a finger to his lips to warn them to keep the noise to a minimum. The lead goat was on top of the berm now, staring down at the intruders, and that was when the whole group heard the high pitched chatter of a young boy talking loudly to either somebody else or maybe just the animals he was watching over.

The SEAL team moved in an instant, scattering and finding cover without anyone having to be told what to do. If they stayed out of sight, with a bit of luck, the kid and his goats would pass them by and never know how close they came to destroying a clandestine mission.

The military man held his breath as one of the goats stopped to chew on the leaves of the bush concealing Schafer. The youngest member of his team kept completely still, even when the beast was joined by one of its friends.

And that was when the man in charge realized that while his squad had scattered and hid, Larry had ducked low and ran off. The whole berm was overrun with the animals now and a skinny youth of no more than seven or eight years old had ambled into view, half turning to call out to his companion in an unknown dialect.

There was nothing he could do about the lone wolf spy. Sam could barely even breathe as the boy stumbled coming down the slope and nearly fell right on top of him.

"Ahmed! Ahmed!" This voice clearly belonged to an elderly man. Even without being able to see who was yelling for the child, Sam could hear the tremble in the tone.

The boy got back to his feet and answered to his elder. Then Sam felt his blood run cold as another voice called out and this time he understood every word.

"Come on out, guys. I've got someone here who can tell us all about our target up in the hills."

Slowly, Sam crawled out of his hiding spot and then, along with the others, rushed over the top of the steep mound to discover Larry tightly gripping the arm of an elderly man dressed in little more than rags and holding his handgun on a terrified youth.

"What the hell are you doin? You coulda compromised the whole -" Lt. Commander Axe stepped forward, intent on pulling the scared kid out of the line of fire.

"I've _saved_ the mission... You think these people wouldn't have noticed a group the size of that camp moving across their land?" The spy jerked on the old goatherd's arm, causing the aged figure to cry out and Sam to tense. "Now, Ahmed Senior here is going to tell us everything he has heard about the men with all the trucks up over the ridge line or Ahmed Junior here is going to be in urgent need of a surgeon."

The dark haired spy turned his ice cold eyes to his aged captive and began to speak rapidly in a language it was obvious from their expressions that both of the prisoners understood.

"Larry, you're _not_ gonna to hurt the kid," Sam growled low. Unslinging his rifle, he turned it in the direction of the spy.

"- - al Harzari - -" The old guy was blabbering now, tears filling his eyes as he gesticulated wildly with his free arm.

Whatever Larry had told him was going to happen, he clearly had no trouble believing the devils before him were capable of doing it. The boy went to run. But in his panic he ran straight into Lieutenant Farley, who easily held the youth still.

"Boss?"

The SEAL team leader was torn. He didn't like the idea of terrorizing children or the elderly, but it was obvious Larry was getting results.

"Keep hold of the kid, Lance... Garber, Schafer, do a sweep. I don't want any more surprises."

The spy now had a knife in his hand, the blade up against the goatherd's throat. "Larry, ease up for Christ's sake. I'm not gonna let ya kill a couple of civilians for intel we can get ourselves."

For a second, Sam thought the older man was going to kill the prisoner as the cruel looking weapon in his hand drew a thin line of blood along the even older man's throat.

"_You_ don't tell _me_ what to do," the spy spat the words out. But then a split second later, he let go of the ancient herder and sheathed the blade.

"Our new friend here told me the camp belongs to a large group of armed men. One of them, the leader he says, is Abdul al Harzari."

"He says?" Axe scoffed. "You've scared the pants off the old guy. He's just telling ya what ya wanna hear, Lare."

"If you'd bothered to learn the language, Sammy, you'd know he didn't _just_ throw out a name. He described a man riding at the head of a convoy in an open topped Jeep with a scarred face and a patch over his left eye..."

Larry looked from his trembling captive back to the SEAL team as the younger members returned.

"And if you remember from the file the picture of our target, you should also remember al Harzari lost an eye and his face got burned when an Iraqi missile took out his home and killed his wife." _And there was the arrogant I-told-you-so look that Sam was beginning to hate with a passion._ "So, now we know. So now, what do you want to do with our friends here?"

Lt. Commander Axe ran his hand over his stubble covered chin. Though it didn't sit well with him, the spy did have a point. The old geezer hadn't just thrown out a name. He'd also been able to give a description of the target, which had to mean something. Sam looked from the goatherd to the boy; their clothing was threadbare and showed signs of being repaired countless times. Wherever these two had come from, he seriously doubted they had access to any technology which would have given them the clues necessary to answer Larry's questions with a lie.

"We'll leave them here. Tie 'em up and we'll let 'em go once the mission is completed." He had made his decision. "Once we get eyes on the camp, we'll call in the strike."

**()()()()()**

"Shut the door and take a seat, gentlemen."

Commander Krell leaned back in his chair, smiling at the two men who were in the process of sitting down in front of his desk.

"I've just finished having a conversation with Admiral Price and I've gotta tell you, congratulations are in order. The mission is being called an outstanding success. Based on Sizemore's report and the photographs he uploaded, Langley's confirmed not only did you guys get al Harzari, but his second in command, Memor Bidlisi, too and, the icing on the cake, Abu Tarim, the Cairo bomber. This has not only made the Egyptian government _very _happy, but also proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that al Harzari was looking to take his little operation to the next level."

Sam blinked and shifted uncomfortably in his chair. The SEAL had expected to be informed he was facing an inquiry for what had happened in al Harzari's camp. He deserved to be put on charges; he had let Larry Sizemore get inside his head and-

_They had left the goatherd and his grandson hog-tied, gagged and out of sight before they'd set off on the final leg of their mission. Throughout the night, the covert operative had pushed for his plan of calling in the missile strike as soon as they could set up the laser guidance system. Larry had argued they didn't need to pinpoint their target, that taking out the whole base in one shot would decimate the group and any survivors would be scattered and therefore less of a threat to the peacekeeping forces. But he had held out, finally telling the older man to keep his mouth shut._

_However, when they had gotten within a few miles of __their objective__, things had begun to change._

_On three separate occasions, they'd had to silence sentries guarding the perimeter and then when they had reached the ridge which would give them a full view of the stronghold, they had realized exactly how many men al Harzari had managed to gather under him._

_It had been in the pre-dawn light that he had ordered the laser to be set up to target the middle of the camp. It was just too dangerous to run surveillance on a compound that size with roving sentries and access to so many weapons._

_At 05:00 hours, Lieutenant Farley had called in for the strike and at 05:30 hours the first of two missiles struck the terrorist encampment. By 05:45 hours, the SEAL team was involved in a fire fight with the men who had been outside the kill zone, neutralizing six fighters before driving off the others._

They had entered the area an hour and a half after the missiles had decimated it and what they had found-

_It might have been a terrorist camp, there was no doubt it had been heavily guarded and the men were all armed. But it had also been a compound containing women and children. While Larry had searched through the shattered bodies with what had looked like nary a care, Sam had found himself watching the older man and wondering just how much the goat herder had told him about who had been living there alongside the radicals._

"You have anything you want to add to the official report, Sam?"

His commander's voice brought the younger man back from reliving the sickening sight of the remains of al Harzari's home base.

"Er, no sir."

"Good." Krell nodded. "So, you agree that, though the collateral damage was regrettable, there was nothing you could have done differently to neutralize al Harzari and his followers without endangering the lives of your team and risking the mission objective?"

He could have waited until they had a clear sight on the target and then called in a surgical strike, limiting the destruction. If he had known there were children sleeping in the tents, he would have thought long and hard for a different solution before destroying the entire camp.

"Lieutenant Commander Axe?"

"No sir, nothing different."

"Okay then, go write up your reports and take the rest of the day off... Good job, gentlemen."

Leaving their commander's office, Sam started to walk towards his quarters. He was feeling worn out and, if he was honest, he was not looking forward to writing up his report and then sitting through a final debrief.

"Hey, Axe-man, let's head topside and get some fresh air before we start writing." Farley urged a change of direction, indicating the staircase which would take them up to the outside world.

It was on the tip of Sam's tongue to turn down the offer. But some fresh sea air to blow away the post operation blues might be just what he needed.

Up on the deck, the two SEALs found the other two members of their team leaning against a safety rail, watching a stretcher being carried over to a waiting helicopter.

"That Larry's buddy?" their leader asked.

"Yes sir, he's being shipped over to the air base in Turkey. Incirlik has a hospital," Ensign Schafer replied.

"Good. Larry going with him?"

"Why, Sam, I didn't know you cared."

The SEAL team turned as one at the sound of a familiar voice. Larry was still dressed in fatigues, his own clothes having been ruined after his flight through Kut with an injured partner. It galled Sam to see the older man wearing anything that resembled a naval uniform.

"I don't. What I would like to know is exactly what that old guy told you about who was in that camp."

The spy smirked. "Are you still whining about ordering that strike? It was the right call, Axe. Everybody agrees it was necessary. Langley, the Pentagon, all the politicians in DC, every one of them is doing a happy dance right now over those three dead terrorists." The dark haired operative went to walk past to make his way over to the heli-pad.

"I asked you a question, buddy."

Sam gripped the agent's bicep, pulling Larry back round to face him. Removing the hand from his arm, Mr. Sizemore calmly stared back at the younger man.

"Why don't you go ask that old coot and the kid, _if you think you can find 'em_." He took two steps and then turned back around. "Oh, you can add 'em to the list of people who're happy about not having a terrorist army in their backyard... Them and the goats."

Sam felt a rush of blood to his head as the covert operative turned away, his laughter ringing out across the deck.

"Heyyy, easy there, brother." Lance wrapped an arm around his friend's shoulder, holding him back. "You do not want to end up on charges for decking that guy... I tell ya, Sizemore is a bad influence. You need to stay away from him."

"Yeah, good advice, buddy," his compatriot agreed, while still glaring daggers at the spy's retreating back. "Let's just hope the brass doesn't decide to pair us up again any time soon."

The group watched in silence until the chopper and its cargo had left the deck of the USS Nassau and then breathed a collective sigh of relief as the helicopter faded into the distance.

"Maybe you should have a talk with your inside _man_ at Langley and see what she-"

"Alright, Lancer, let's go," Sam cut him off. "Those reports aren't going to write themselves and then first round's on you."

Sam Axe had buddies all over the world and he had plenty markers out there waiting, but the military man made it a practice to never call in a professional favor before it was well and truly due. With a little bit of luck and the law of averages in play, there was every possibility that he'd never see those cold blue eyes and that self righteous smirk staring back at him ever again and he could save whatever goodwill he might have to expend to avoid the irritating operative for another rainy day.

On the other hand, in this case, he might make an exception. Because as far as the SEAL was concerned right this moment, one more second in the company of Larry Sizemore was one second too many.


	4. Avione Italy 1991

_**A/N**_ – _Thanks for sticking with us through to the fourth installment in __Life with Larry__. In tonight's story, at long last, Larry finally meets the man he deemed worthy become his protégé, the young Michael Westen. Next week the pair will go on their first mission together; little did poor Michael know what he was getting into. _

_In other news, a special __holiday edition of __Reconnecting__ for Independence Day here in the States will be posted tomorrow. This will be the next installment in the 601 AU, My Island in the Sun series. Check the M-page to enjoy the 'fireworks' and find out what Michael and Fiona finally named Baby Boy Westen _

_Last but not least, the new series from Jedi's Pal starts this Monday, July 7th at 10 PM. __Be Brave Little Angels__ is the prequel to __Puppies, Kittens and Gun Toting Babies__ and will tell the tale of what happened if Michael didn't leave Fiona behind in Ireland. __Much love and many thanks to all the #Burners out there on Facebook, Twitter and Fan Fiction for keeping Burn Notice alive! See you next week at #BurnerClub!_

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**Avione, Italy 1991**

Special Agent Larry Sizemore was tired of waiting. It had taken him almost three years since his dismissal from operations in the Soviet Union, which would soon no longer exist if his intel correct, to make his way back to Eastern Europe. He had finally gotten the official _and_ _unofficial_ clearance to accept an assignment in the Balkans, which would put him within reach of his old assets and largely out of the reach of his old enemies. The CIA's former top wet work specialist in Europe cum freelance assassin was ready to return.

Now that he had everything lined up, Larry was impatient to begin the next phase of his career. Worse yet, he was becoming bored and that condition had frequently proven fatal to the people around him. At the moment, his current partner was pressing for the opportunity to relieve him of that boredom.

The man just didn't know it.

They were sitting in La Bell Vista Club, otherwise known as the chow hall, of the US Air Force Base at Avione in northeastern Italy waiting for the plane that would take them to the CIA's newly acquired clandestine headquarters: a private house in Skopje, in the region of Momin Potok, which had been converted for the Agency's use, equipped with highly sophisticated technology and blessed by the interior ministry and the various intelligence agencies that they hosted in Macedonia. There they would meet with the newly appointed Station Chief for the Balkans region. _New base, new boss, new assignment…_

The airbase itself was an odd layout as military bases went, with nine sections being spread out between two towns and across hundreds of acres, very different than the cramped quarters they had worked out of in Sagrado while investigating Gladio, an alleged terrorist group. The job was far beneath his skill set, but he had made some important contacts that would benefit his side business, so he considered it bearable.

It had been the last leg in the long journey from South American to the Middle East to finally back to Europe, with stops in Turkey and Greece along with way. Finally, Stratton had been useful in the manner Larry had intended when he'd taken the troublesome agent off of Station Chief Morales' hands back in Bolivia.

"I'm telling you, Lare, they were beautiful. You should've been there!"

_Everyone has a weakness to exploit, _his mentor's voice reminded the stone cold killer_. That's rule number three. If that fails, there's always rule number two_: _Anyone can have a heart attack anywhere at any time._

As he eyed his colleague, sitting there sipping the coffee Stratton had insisted he needed after a long night of sexual exploits, Mr. Sizemore could just feel a cleansing heart attack in the offing, maybe even a rash of them if it turned out that he didn't like the newly appointed Head of Balkan Operations either.

Eric Stratton's weakness was women, always had been. He thought with his little head instead of his big one as the saying went, when he thought at all. But that was one of the reasons Larry had tolerated the man. Eric was easy to manipulate and would do or say virtually anything and he was good with explosives, one thing with which the CIA's master assassin had never bothered to become overly proficient. Oh, he could build a bomb if he had to, but he preferred more subtle and personal ways of ending someone's life.

_Any idiot can wire a car to explode, kid. It might or might not take out your intended target and it makes the job that much harder if you miss. Bombs are for terrorists; pro's use their hands and their heads. Poisons, knives of all kinds, the feel of breaking a neck or squeezing the life out of body with your own bare hands, now _that's killing_. Even using a sniper rifle or handgun with a silencer can be personal if you do it right._

Agent Sizemore let out a heavy sigh. Twenty years of taking on the KGB was gone. The Soviet Union was disintegrating and falling into the hands of the various factions, militias and mobsters and he was missing out on it. His final mission in Moscow had cost him what should have been the crowning jewel of his career as a cold warrior. That was why he had requested a transfer to the Balkans. Now _there_ was a place getting ready to descent into utter madness and wherever such chaos reigned, there was always opportunity.

It also got him back into Eastern Europe where he could re-establish his contacts now that he was certain he could work with Evelyn and she hadn't compromised his identity. It felt strange having a grudging respect for a woman, but she had earned it. She'd almost taken him out of the game and had finished off Brick.

_Never trust a woman. They have lots of good uses, but they'll kill you if you don't keep your eye on 'em._

"I was going to save one for you, just your type, too; a real little minx from Minsk," Eric enthused.

He had missed the women in the Ukraine, the dark haired spy decided, as much as he had ever missed any women in particular. They were generally tough, vicious, no nonsense types or particularly desperate, sometimes both, and they understood the rules of the engagement. Charming women was all too easy for him and therefore tiresome after so many years. _Chasing skirts is just a waste of time. Guys like Stratton expend too much energy either trying to get laid or cleaning up a mess when they get careless_.

Not that he had any objections to that kind of work. The former senior agent to the Soviets had taken care of "little problems" for numerous politicians and powerful people all over the world throughout his career, both on and off the government payroll. He considered it a two-for and he charged accordingly. _It paid well_.

However, it was when the Eric Strattons of the world thought they should get a freebie just because he happened to know them that the spy got irritated. Larry Sizemore didn't work for free because that was the number one rule his mentor had taught him. He _always_ got paid. Even Uncle Sam gave him a paycheck.

"You really should lay off the coffee, pal," Larry remarked with a knowing smile. "All that caffeine'll kill you one day."

His associate leaned back on the bench seat until his elbows were on the table behind him and then kicked his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankle. They could have almost been twins at a distance. They were for all practical purposes: same age, height, weight, build, coloring and bone structure.

"Your concern is touching, partner," Eric informed him.

That was the primary reason Agent Sizemore had worked with and tolerated this man. He'd make a convenient and convincing substitute should the CIA's premier wet work specialist ever need to disappear. Just the right amount of heat applied to the body and no one would know the difference. He had been the perfect stalking horse to test if Comrade Chenov was toying with him and had really planned to finish him off.

"That's right; always looking out for you, old buddy."

Larry had learned what he could about the elusive Evelyn Salt while his partner had been recovering from his injuries back on the US Air Force Base at Incirlik in southeastern Turkey, their first stop after Iraq. It hadn't been much, but it had been enough to allow Mr. Sizemore to pick out the perfect sniper spot, a rooftop with plenty of cover and escape routes and the target on her right hand side, as she was left handed.

Once Larry had learned that Evelyn was in the area, no doubt because he had been poking around in her past, it had been a simple matter to take Eric into nearby town of Adana and encourage the unsuspecting agent to parade back and forth in front of said perch multiple times a day to test whether the Amazonian assassin intended to execute him after all.

After a few weeks of allowing Stratton to flirt with the skirts he had paid off to keep his associate occupied, Larry was confident that he could move forward and take the mating dance of the hired guns to the next level. If Evelyn hadn't shot his colleague from a distance, either because she thought it was him or as a warning to him, then it was time to see if the former premier double agent in the KGB was interested in a parlay or just wanted the opportunity to kill him up close.

Larry almost laughed. It was something he would have done.

"I can't believe you missed out, man. We waited for you for like almost an hour," Stratton advised.

"Whole hour, huh..? Getting shot up really has slowed you down, pal," Sizemore countered.

The mess hall in which they were sitting was practically deserted this time of day. Larry made a habit of checking out where the food and beverages were dispensed at any stop he made for any length of time. The other man's hunt for a cup of Java had merely coincided with that omnipresent procedure.

His colleague's addiction to coffee was almost as strong as his obsession with the opposite sex. The man could wax poetic about the variances in flavor and effects, particularly about the roasts and bean varieties available in the western hemisphere as opposed to the eastern one. That was another thing he could almost tolerate about his partner and it had allowed Larry use Eric as a cut out without much explanation needed to the operative or the Agency once they had arrived that their next 'light duty' assignment for the Company.

After Stratton's recovery was complete, his partner's shenanigans in Baghdad had earned them a posting near the 7206th Air Base Group in Greece, which was the primary USAF unit within the 6916th Security squadron that provided electronic aerial surveillance of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. It was also used for airlift evacuation operations throughout the late sixties and early eighties. So, by the time the pair of spies had been assigned to a couple of desks to follow-up on actionable intel provided by the fly boys of the Hellenikon Air Base, not much of anything of importance had been happening there for awhile.

Mr. Sizemore sat on the opposite side on the table at the Italian airbase where they now waited, leaning on his elbows with his fingers entwined to ensure that he didn't give in to the desire to reach forward and break Stratton's neck on the spot as he remembered how infuriated he had been with the assignment and the reason for it. But Larry had learned to make the best of bad situations before and he had once again.

Most people would have been thrilled to be dropped on the southern tip of Greece, nearer the beach than the fabled city of Athens to the northeast and, lucky for him, Eric Stratton was most people. The carefree spy enjoyed his days ogling whatever passed by while he was unwittingly being set up to be murdered in the stead of his senior partner, used again and again as a cut out to deliver various intel to actual US field agents and feints towards the emissaries sent by the GRU-trained assassin that Larry wanted to work with.

He chuckled softly. For a CIA agent, Eric Stratton was not very observant, except when it came to one thing. And that one thing had just walked through the rear doors at the opposite end of the long room.

"Thank you, sir. May I have another?"

With that said, the other agent was on his feet, his coffee abandoned, headed for the fair haired Amazon who'd just entered the target zone.

His colleague sighed again. He'd grown exceedingly weary of hearing _that_ line, which signaled the start of another hunt. It seemed there was just no one he could work with that _got it._ He'd worked with some promising people, but Stratton was not one of them. Brick had been the closest thing to an actual partner Larry had found in decades. They'd had _somewhat _similar experiences growing up; the man understood pain and how to apply it and the same approach to dealing with the little problems their work threw at them.

But even Mr. Breeland didn't really _get it_, although he knew Larry's protocol and followed it to the letter. Subconsciously, Mr. Sizemore had been searching for someone who understood the joys of wet work, who really appreciated the thrill of the kill. Someone who had been trained like he had by life, someone willing to be molded as he had been by a mentor.

He watched carefully as Eric approached her. She was tall for a female and solidly built, broad shoulders, _swimmer's shoulders was the term_, and probably a narrow waist, although the suit coat hid most of that. No need for shoulder pads there, he grinned internally. The woman's dirty blonde hair was pinned up tightly and the blue power suit matched her eyes. Her frame reminded him a bit of Evelyn, though the assassin was a classic Russian beauty as opposed to the more Slavic features of this woman. But the details of her appearance, while duly noted, were ultimately irrelevant to him. He was interested in what she was made of.

_This broad was observant_, taking in all her surroundings from the moment she entered, and carefully assessing the object that was inbound. Her overall bearing was military, he could see that. But the casual stance that masked her readiness to strike at any second spoke of another kind of training. This one had definitively been a valedictorian at the school of hard knocks. Larry was good at recognizing that in other people. _He'd seen it in the mirror often enough_. Her story was probably just as ugly as his was.

"Agent Eric Stratton," the other agent announced, thrusting his hand out, "Damned glad to meet you."

His partner had to sigh yet again at that, too. _That line was getting seriously old as well_.

He eyed Stratton's abandoned beverage with longing.

_No, it wouldn't do for him to have a heart attack just yet. _

"Station Chief Rayna Kopec," she returned, taking the man's hand firmly.

He could see his associate's surprise at her grip from where he sat.

"Oh, so, you're the new sheriff in town," Eric remarked, removing his hand as quickly as possible despite what he had originally intended.

_So that was the new station chief_.

Larry felt his spirit buoy. She was not going to be easy to manipulate or intimidate. Putting her in her place was going to be very entertaining. He was already warming to the challenge. It might alleviate the boredom enough to prolong his colleague's life just a little longer.

The door at the back of the base commissary opened again and Larry found his attention locked on the dark haired young man in the deep grey suit who came through next. If the new chief had been a fascinating combination of solider and street-kid, this one took it to a whole new level. The kid was one _wary_ predator.

Mr. Sizemore found himself grinning wolfishly, not the false but oh so effective smile he could plaster on his face in an instant and drop just as quickly, but a look of actual satisfaction, the kind he usually reserved for a particularly gratifying homicide. If _that one_ had half the potential he was projecting, well, then he might just have found what he was looking for, waiting for actually without really knowing it: _an apprentice_.

She turned toward the rear entrance and excused herself, dismissing Stratton both literally and figuratively. Even though she'd turned her back on him, the blonde was still watching surreptitiously until his colleague began to move back towards their table. Then she turned her full attention back to the tightly wound younger man in the doorway.

Eric lowered himself onto the bench and then looked back over his shoulder at the pair of them speaking quietly before turning back to address his associate.

"Looks like the bitch brought one of her pups with her," he groused.

"That's not a trainee," Larry countered. _The man is oblivious. I should get a bonus for taking him off the payroll and saving the taxpayers the money._

"Okay, lap dog then," Stratton complained. "I'm sure they spend plenty of time playing fetch the 'stick' after hours."

"Not that one," the senior agent assured him as the duo turned and started walking towards them. "That's nobody's a lap dog and he's not a pup- although he might just be the pick of the litter."

At his last remark, the younger man's attention fixed on Larry, followed by the woman's.

They'd heard him; _impressive, most impressive._

Agent Sizemore stood and moved around the table, bypassing the other man to meet the twosome in the middle of the enormous dining hall.

"Larry Sizemore," he said flashing all his pearly whites, reaching for the intense young man's hand, testing his grip and liking what he found.

"Michael Westen…" came the terse response. Michael turned toward the agent he'd worked with during the past two years and gestured in her direction. He'd caught the older man's snub of her as well as the handshake test. "This is—"

"Station Chief Kopec," Larry filled in. "So I've heard, my dear."

"Agent Sizemore," she acknowledged as he used both his hands to clasp hers. He knew by the look of those appendages that, in her case, the handshake test would be a useless rookie gambit. He was going to move straight to the disrespect through over-familiarity campaign.

By this point, the other operative had grown tired of being ignored and had joined them.

"That is Eric Stratton," he said, nodding his head back over his shoulder towards the man behind him. "He's damned glad to meet you."

The aforementioned agent held his hand up in a half-hearted wave and then dropped it.

"There's been a change of flight plans," Chief Kopec informed them. "Agent Westen and I have business that apparently wasn't quite as finished as we thought it was. So our flight's being redirected. There'll be a plane to take both of your to headquarters in another six hours. I look forward to working with you both when we return. Take the time to get yourselves acclimated, gentlemen. We have lot of work to do."

"Who was your recruiter?" Larry asked suddenly before Michael could depart.

"William Raines," he answered, though his curiosity about the question was evident. "Do you know him?"

"Sure do." That confirmed everything he'd needed to know about Mr. Westen's potential. Raines had a reputation for being able to spot raw talent, talent others frequently missed. He'd find out soon enough who'd been his training officer. _God, if it had been Tom Card… _Larry found himself smiling again.

While he disliked the man personally, there was no question that those who survived that training officer's regimen were top of the class. The bastard was _by the book_, but there was no doubt in Mr. Sizemore's mind that Card's drive had a darker origin than even the trainer himself was probably unaware of and Tom used that most effectively to find whatever buttons needed to be pushed to get the most out of his trainees.

"Then we'll see you two over there in a week or so after you get back from-?" he asked, his face a mask of innocence as he turned his attention back to the duo before him. He feigned it well considering he hadn't actually been innocent in such a very long time. The Station Chief gave Larry a look that told him what she thought of his deliberately amateur probing before turning her level gaze on the younger man at her side.

"Westen," His new boss said, as she turned to go.

The older man held Michael's attention for another brief moment and then the junior operative followed the tall blonde out of the room. Agent Sizemore watched the retreating figures until the door shut behind them.

"What an Ice Queen," Stratton complained.

_Ice Queen, huh? That sounded about right._

But she wasn't what was really on his mind as they returned to the table and Eric's now cold coffee.

_It was the opportunity to train someone fresh, someone who had clawed their way through what life had thrown at them, just as he had; someone who understood the meaning of pain and how and when to apply it; someone who could stand on the top of the food chain with him and enjoy looking down just as he did; someone to share his legacy with, someone who could be a true acolyte._

He'd just been waiting for the right person to come across his path.

"Hey, you in there, man?" His colleague waved his hand in front of Larry's face, whose exceptionally rare reverie had not gone unnoticed. "You sure seemed awful taken with that guy. You're not turning queer on me, are you, man?"

"What? No." Larry's smile was broad, but his eyes were alight with just the tiniest hint of malice. "I was just thinking of all the ways we could defrost the Ice Queen. Quite the challenge, right, old buddy?" he concluded, punching his partner in the arm just a little too hard.

"Oh, yeah," Eric agreed, warming to the topic. "I can think of loads of way to melt that cold—"

As his soon-to-be-ex-partner prattled on about everything he wanted to do to Rayna Kopec, Larry was mentally calculating. The best intel he had said there would be no more Soviet Union in a matter of weeks. The Ice Queen and the Kid were obviously going to be tied up making sure that their assets were protected.

He would have to do a little of that himself, but he couldn't afford to be open about it… not yet… and, as for Mr. Stratton, it was time for him to meet another blonde bombshell that would take his breath away _literally._ He just hoped that Ms. Salt was still in northern Italy and had not yet departed for places unknown quite yet.

"Tell you what," Larry said as he threw his arms around the other's man shoulders, steering him towards the rear exit, "Why don't we get off the base and go get some real food? I know a little place, Ristorantino Snack Bar K2, terrible name, but a great bar and the food and the women are to die for."

Mr. Sizemore managed not to smirk as he said it.

"Hey, maybe I can round up those two from last night?" Stratton was already working on how the night was going to end. "You really missed out, man. Those two were wild."

The older man couldn't help the grin that broke out that time, although he fully expected the other man to completely misinterpret his meaning. The two _tourists_ from the motherland whom his partner had picked up last night, according to Evelyn, were actually KGB operatives looking to make contact with Agent Sizemore. They had entertained the junior agent in hopes the senior would arrive some time sooner rather than later.

"You wait right here, ol' buddy. I'm going to commandeer us a car and we can enjoy the rest of the night. We'll just take a little drive down the SP7 and, before you know it, we'll be turning onto Via Giuseppe Garibaldi. Until that plane comes back around, we've got plenty of time to kill." And the corners of his bright eyes crinkled at the thought. Exiting the double metals door, Mr. Sizemore went out into the cold and pulled his phone from the recesses of his coat pocket. Lucky seven on the speed dial answered quickly.

"_Well, well, I didn't except to hear from you so soon. Miss me already?"_

"I have a little favor to ask if you're still in town. I think you might even enjoy it."

"_Even more than last night…? Hmmm, sounds intriguing. You know, I might just be able to squeeze you into my schedule. Of course, that is if you can make it worth my time…I'm a very busy woman."_

He flashed his pearly whites in the darkness at a sergeant who jumped at the clearance level on his badge and quickly opened the door to the motor pool. _It was so refreshing to deal with a female who had her head on straight even if it was going to cost him an asset. Ah, well, you have to break an egg or two for omelets…_

"Maybe you'd like to know why what you're planning for next week needs to be rescheduled."

"_Oh, good, we do have something to talk about."_

He ended the call by letting the sergeant know, and by extension his latest business partner, where he was taking the vehicle and Mr. Stratton for the night and then collected the proverbial bane of his existence these last two years and tried to keep his mind on the road ahead in the darkness of the Italian winter's eve.

While Eric sat in the passenger seat was recounting his _m__énage à trios _fantasies come to life from the prior evening, Larry had been considering the ramifications of sealing the pact between himself and the most dangerous woman east of the rapidly disintegrating Iron Curtain. After six months in Greece, dangling his hapless partner like chum on a shark line, the wet work specialist had taken the next step by getting himself assigned to chase left wing ghosts for the Italian government from a cramped little office space in the north.

After another six months of narrowly missing Ms. Salt and in turn avoiding her in various locations throughout the uppermost and eastern-most parts of the Italian peninsula, the cat and mouse game they were playing with ever increasing intrigue came to a conclusion one night in the city of fair Verona. But instead of standing on balconies declaring their undying love for one another, the two master assassins found each other staring across an alley, roof-top to roof-top, through two highly calibrated sniper scopes.

Both had ducked down simultaneously. He hadn't had to wait too long for his cell to ring.

"_That was clever, sending Eric with a .38 special for me for yesterday… two bullets missing. You remembered. I'm touched. Did you really think I was going to kill him for you after all this time? I always get paid, one way or another. Do you have any idea how much money you cost me back in Moscow?" _

"_Not nearly as much as you cost me," Larry had assured her. "I'm hoping we're past all that now. You were the one who followed me to Kapotnya and you just couldn't bring yourself to finish off the competition?"_

"_You were good. You almost had me. If it hadn't been for… by the way, you really need to get yourself a partner that's not distracted by big tits." She chuckled, a snarky sound if ever he'd heard one. "Anyway, I was intrigued. You were the first one who got away. I wanted to know if you were that good, or that lucky."_

"_Oh, I am that good and I just get better every day. So, shall we cut to the chase here? Are we killing each other or working together?"_

"_But the chase is so much fun."_

"_You obviously have more free time than I do, dear. The KGB might be kaput, but I've still got a day job."_

"_Alright, I'll admit it, I'm a fan," Evelyn confessed. "I have a job next week here and when I heard you were going to be in the city of so much... hmmm…tragic romance shall we say, the stars just sort of lined up. I have a suite at the Palazzo Victoria. Bring your best poisons and maybe we'll make some magic. But don't keep me waiting long or I might change my mind about killing you when we're done."_

As the dark haired spy sat in the middle of the room, buying drinks and telling loud off-color jokes, making sure that everyone saw him and the not-quite-dead-yet Mr. Stratton together, he was genuinely anticipating the rest of the evening. His dear friend "Lucy" would be striding through the door within a few hours, a mane of flowing brown hair and as little clothes on as the weather allowed. Soon enough, she would be on her way to show his good ol' buddy _the_ _time of his life_ and then he would be one step closer to his goal.

_Michael Westen was going to be one unstoppable sonuvabitch when he was done with his protégé. _


	5. Havana, Cuba 1992

_**A/N:**__Thank you all for your reviews for the story of __Life With Larry__. We both appreciate all your comments and feedback. In tonight's fifth installment, Larry takes yet another new partner on a mission, which takes them from the Balkans to the Island of Cuba. _

_Next Thursday, Michael and Larry's mission will take them to Algeria, where we will finally learn how Michael ended up with those trademark Oliver Peoples Victory sunglasses of his._

_On other news, we were overwhelmed by your enthusiasm for our new story, __Be Brave Little Angel__, which we plan to update on Mondays at 6pm EDT. Thanks to all the Burners out there who are helping to keep __**Burn Notice**__ alive. We are grateful for every reader and review!_

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**Skopje, Macedonia 1992**

The private house was like so many others in the Momin Potok suburb of the Macedonian capital. Its tall solidly built three-story façade had been given a recent paint job prior to the new owners taking over. Its current mistress appreciated not having to deal with the maintenance issues and was grateful for installation of plumbing on the third floor as well as the new metal railings which capped the small inset balconies on the top and middle stories.

The residence was not new, but nor was it as old as some of the seventeenth and eighteenth century structures nearby; however, what the building did have was all the electronics and the security measures that made this modest appearing place tucked in the trees near the Serava, a small tributary of the Vardar River that wound its way through and around Skopje, the most advanced CIA clandestine headquarters in the Balkans region.

The uppermost floor, which Station Chief Rayna Kopec had claimed as her own inner sanctum, reminded the dirty blonde of the attic apartments which were common throughout the north eastern region of the US. But she was long past being bothered by reminders of a bygone era. Her journey from the mean streets of Brooklyn across the country to California was long ago. With a little persuasion from a certain sailor, she had made first the Navy and then the Agency her life. Nothing else mattered. That singularity of focus had made Rayna an outstanding officer and then operative. She had gone from trainee to station chief in a relatively short amount of time.

The space and the access they were given during their time working out of offices of the Interior Ministry and the Defense Department, graciously provided by their host country and located in the capital, were vital to the CIA's work in the Balkans region. But Ms. Kopec and her bosses were very pleased to have a sophisticated and much more private workspace. The first floor served as the front for local assets to drop in for a cuppa and a chat. The second story was where the analysts and the office personnel had their work space. _The top floor was hers_.

The new Station Chief of the Balkans had just finished setting up her _public_ office on the second story of the building. She smiled now that there was no one to see. Agent Stanwyck hadn't understood why she had insisted on placing her desk in nearly the center of the room and the former Shore Patrol officer wasn't given to explaining herself. Her job was to get answers, not give them. Besides, the man would figure it out soon enough, _if he lasted_, that the reason she needed the room arranged this way was that she needed the space to pace.

Once upon a time, an engaging young Ensign had offered the theory that her habit of pacing whilst working through problems was a controlled form of running away, something she had done a lot of in her pre-Navy days. It had been more of a painful truth for him, as the remark had earned him a black eye. She liked to think of her need to move while thinking as a productive channelling of pent-up energy which resulted in good ideas and better decisions.

These last weeks had been hectic. Ensuring that _Magdalene Polzin's_ assets, particularly Anton Yelchin, were secure, accompanied by her _nephew, Victor Roshenko_, had taken up a lot of time that Rayna had intended to use on getting up to speed on what was going on in her new region. The younger agent was capable and adaptable, if somewhat headstrong, but still a bit green.

She'd already been working with Westen for more than a year, ever since the former Ranger and newly minted agent had returned to Afghanistan when she'd needed another agent on the ground to assist her in continuing to misdirect the Soviet arms flowing into that country. SC Kopec had been impressed enough with his talents to request him at her new posting, its primary focus continuing to be those same no longer Soviet but still functioning trade routes.

She'd briefly met Agents Stanwyck, Sizemore and Stratton. The former was fresh out of the program and on his first assignment. He was good with the languages of region, proficient in the latest technology the Company had to offer and a little too inquisitive about matters that were above his pay grade. But she'd sort that out soon enough. The latter two... the blonde had heard quite a bit about them and most of it was very…._intriguing?_ Deciphering what was truth from what was rumor and gossip was always a challenge, but that's what they did for a living. In the shadow world they worked and an organization they worked for, where everyone was highly trained in the art of deception, getting at the truth was the ultimate prize and a power to wield. Ms. Kopec had had some concerns about Agent Stratton, but not any longer.

Because the first piece of news that landed on her desk once it was in place was that Stratton was dead. The man Rayna had wanted to send out for her first operation as Station Chief of the Balkans had passed away from a massive heart attack in the company of some athletic looking brunette who had, according to police reports and the eyewitnesses at the bar, left the Ristorantino Snack Bar K2 with the Company man in tow. Apparently Eric Stratton had found a way to kill more than time while waiting for the next flight to Macedonia.

Which left the Station Chief with a problem, as she had actionable intel that was not going to wait and she never sanctioned extractions with less than a two-man team. That left her the choice of going herself with Westen or sending the junior agent out with the older operative.

Larry Sizemore was already a legend, his meteoric rise to the top the basis for gossip and envy while she'd still been tearing through the training program at the Farm. She was no doe-eyed school girl when it came to the harsher realities of what doing the job sometimes meant, but she certainly wouldn't have picked wet work for a career. The one time she had been forced to look down a sniper scope at an asset who had become more than a friend and then a liability had convinced Rayna it was not an experience she cared to repeat ever if at all possible.

_Love nothing and nothing you love can be taken from you. Your co-workers are your family. Your loyalty is to your country and the Company. _She had learned those lessons at Langley and had taken them completely to heart. However, the Agency assassins' creed was a whole different level of commitment.

That took a special type and, according to what the former SP had heard, Larry was _that type_.

_"Some people have a gift, if you can call it that, for the work. Larry loves using a blade, but he's pretty fond of his poisons, too. The brass loves him too, so watch your step with him."_

The warning had come from Larry's previous handler. He had also warned her that the man had some pretty _old fashioned_ opinions about women. It had taken all of her training not to laugh out loud. That made Sizemore no different than most of the male employees of the CIA.

She'd known going into the Navy that she'd have to be twice as good as her male counterparts to succeed and Rayna had taken that as a personal challenge and become a Shore Patrol officer. She'd had enough experience throwing drunken sailors out of bars before enlisting.

Dealing with it in the Agency was no different. She'd had to break Westen of it early on during their time in the field together in Termiz, working on diverting the supply of the Soviet arms coming though the Afghan mountains. He had learned better by the time he was posing as her nephew during their deep cover assignments in the USSR.

So, it had been no surprise at all that someone as tenured as Agent Sizemore would be giving her attitude. Station Chief Kopec had learned long ago to pick her battles in order to win the war. Still, there was something she couldn't put her finger on about her new senior field agent, particularly his interest in Agent Westen. He wasn't known for his willingness to mentor young agents and working with the older man seemed to carry some additional occupational hazards for his former partners.

She had wanted to keep Westen working locally at first. The former Ranger had been too much of a natural spy at heart to take orders for the sake of orders, but his mindset was still too military in some ways. So, she'd initially wanted him close to base. But thanks to Stratton, Rayna was left with the option of leaving Sizemore to cool his heels while she was not doing her job as Station Chief or toss the young man overboard and see how well he could swim.

**()()()()()**

Larry was congratulating himself on his genius. He hadn't expected it to come to fruition so quickly, but he loved it when a plan just came together. Agent Sizemore had assumed he'd been summoned to the new Station Chief's new digs to discuss the demise of Eric Stratton. He'd planned to subtly suggest that he _might _be persuaded to help her season the rookie she had hanging around and helpfully hint that it _might_ be time to cut the apron strings on the kid.

So, it had been all he could do to keep the smile off his face as he'd _reluctantly_ agreed to take Mr. Westen with him to perform an extraction in Cuba. Larry had been quick to point out that since the young agent was from Miami, he _might_ be useful in navigating their way through the city and onto the Agency provided speed boat waiting to take them to Castro's Island.

As the younger man came into the room and took a seat beside him, the first thing Agent Sizemore decided he needed to do was make sure that the Chief was impressed with their work as a team while he was teaching the kid how things worked in the real world.

"Vladimir Orborski is a retired GRU General now living the good life in the Miramar district of Havana." The blonde had looked at him, lounging in his chair on the opposite side of her desk, and then to his newly acquired partner and her own former trainee Michael Westen.

Observing the dark haired man surreptitiously from the corner of his eye, Larry thought maybe the first thing he _really_ needed to do was teach his apprentice how to relax and look confident before the boss started to wonder if partnering him with such a tightly wound green agent was a good idea.

"Just prior to his retirement, the General arranged for a large shipment of arms and medical equipment to be delivered to the 'Tsarist Wolves,' a Soviet group supporting the Serbian forces operating in Bosnia. Orborski usually has a small army accompanying him at all times. We have intel that suggests he has only a very minimum contingent with him at the present time. But if you take a look at the position of his residence, you'll see that the reason for the drop in his armed personnel probably has something to do with his proximity to the Russian Embassy."

Handing each of her operatives a copy of the folder she was reading from, the woman was concentrating mostly on him as senior field agent. "You'll find your travel orders inside, maps of the city and the location of a safehouse which has been set up for your use. Conduct your surveillance and, if the intel is good and you can perform the extraction without compromising US interests, then I want you two to bring Comrade Orborski back here for a chat. I'd like to find out who his assets are and how he contacts them. So any documentation you gentlemen can gather during the op would be helpful. Any questions?"

As she'd already discussed why agents based out of the Balkans region were running a rendition in Cuba with him earlier while they had been discussing Eric Stratton's untimely demise, Larry didn't ask. Apparently Agent Westen hadn't been inclined to question his orders.

"Good. Get to it, gentlemen. The sooner the general is sitting in one of our interrogation rooms, the sooner we will have the intel to close down a major smuggling route into Serbia."

**()()()()()**

Michael Westen blew out a long breath of relief as he closed Chief Kopec's door behind him and decided to linger in the hallway for a moment to gather his thoughts. He had assumed that he would continue to work with the woman who had been his first senior field officer. That he was being giving the assignment to accompany an agent of Larry's stature so early in his career had his head swimming just a little bit.

It had been with that cool stare when she'd asked him to stay behind for a moment, which the younger man had come to know so well, that told him she wanted to tell him something important and he'd best pay attention to and keep it in confidence.

Michael had watched as the older operative had gotten to his feet, the easy smile on his lips not quite matching the icy glint in his bright blue eyes. _"I'm gonna pack my bags and I will meet you in an hour."_ Larry had slapped a hand down on his shoulder. _"Is that okay with you, my dear?"_

"_That's fine, _Agent_ Sizemore." _She'd barred her own teeth in a smile to match his own. _"I'll_ _only keep Agent Westen a few minutes."_

The blonde had waited a moment after the door closed behind the man and then turned her attention back to him.

"_This is a big step for you, Westen," _she had begun. _"Under normal circumstances, you would not be sent out with an agent of Mr. Sizemore's standing in the Company until you had a few more years of experience under your belt. But we're short handed here and this rendition op will allow us to maximize on the work we started in Termiz. I don't need to tell you how important it is that we control the arms moving into and through this area."_

There was something about Rayna Kopec's eyes, so controlled and yet so intense. He had learned early on to force himself to stare back. She had always excelled in interrogation.

"_There's a couple things I want you to keep in mind. At his level of experience, Agent Sizemore usually takes on special assignments that require his unique skill set. He's recently returned to more mundane field work, by his standards that is, and he has his own way of doing things that may not coincide with what you were taught in training or how we worked together in the field. So just be aware when-"_

"_I'm aware of his reputation, ma'am." He hadn't meant to cut her off, but he'd gotten away with it that time. The Station Chief had given him a curt nod and returned to her paperwork._

He had been projecting a confidence he didn't entirely feel. He'd been a Ranger for three years. He'd been top of his class at Langley. He still held the sharp shooter record at Camp Rhino. He'd worked for one of the most no-nonsense women he'd ever met. But there was something about Larry Sizemore that made him feel like he was getting ready to free climb without any handholds. Maybe it _was _just the man's notoriety that had him on edge.

()()()()()()()()()()

**Havana, Cuba, 36 Hours Later**

_"_Ha, who'da guessed it, Kid? Our first mission under the command of the Balkans Station Chief and she sends us all the way to Cuba." Larry Sizemore's mocking tones were muted as they stood at the back by the high powered motor of the boat carrying them from Miami to their destination in Havana. "I tell ya, that's women for you. Just because this guy might have some relevant intel for her, we have to trail half way round the world when this little job could have been done by some chump outta the South American office."

"I've worked with Ms. Kopec for over a year now Larry. Believe me, she wouldn't send us out unless it was necessary," Michael shouted back, his words whipped away in the wind.

"Oh, don't be like that, Michael. I'm sure the little lady is good at her job, otherwise how would she have risen to the rank of SC so quickly... right? I mean, what else would it be?" The senior agent laughed. "Hey, it looks like we're almost there."

Following the line of the older man's arm, the junior operative could just make out the contours of landfall about two miles away.

"C'mon pal, let's get kitted it out. It's time to go to work."

_It had taken the CIA's newly formed team of Agents Sizemore and Westen thirty six hours to travel from Macedonia to the shores of Miami. As soon as both men had packed their bags, they had made the journey to Skopje Airport, then onto the company jet to the US airbase at Avione and almost immediately onto a military cargo plane on its way to Opa Locka Airport just outside Miami._

_"So, how does it feel to be out for the first time working without a net, Kid?" The older and far more seasoned agent had asked as they settled down into their seats on the Learjet 36A. "Must be nice to get away from the den mother for a while."_

_"I appreciate the opportunity to work with you, Agent Sizemore." Anything else would have sounded too much like brown nosing and anything less was disrespect._

_"Agent Sizemore?" Larry had laughed. "Are we gonna stand on ceremony here, Michael? Mr. Sizemore was my grandpa. Call me Larry."_

_"Okay...Larry."_

_"See? That's wasn't so hard. You gotta loosen up, kid. You've been working for a woman too long. I'm sure she was just trying to let everyone know she's got a set of brass ones too. But the job is easier if you learn to relax and have a little fun._"

_Considering all he had heard about the senior field agent, Michael was finding it hard not to like the older man. He had learned from a early age not to put his trust in anybody but himself and, with Ms. Kopec's words of warning echoing in his ears, he had had every intention of keeping a wary distance from the agency's wet work specialist._

_However, Larry had surprised him. Far from looking down on his rookie partner, the vastly more experienced operative had shown a real interest in what he had to say. They had talked throughout the whole first leg of their flight covering things from what he had done to impress William Raines that the CIA's top recruiter had offered him a place on the company's training program and how had he found his time at the Farm under the tutelage of Tom Card._

_But it had not just been an interrogation by the superior agent, getting up to speed on what the newbie was like. The conversation had flowed both ways, with the older man providing tidbits and commentary about his recruiter and his training officer that Michael found fascinating as well as things regarding his former first field officer and current boss. Raines, Card and Kopec were all contemporaries, but Mr. Sizemore had ten years on the trio and knew things about them Mr. Westen could never have discovered on his own._

_By the time they had climbed onto the transport plane at Avione, the tightly wound wary predator Larry had first met in the chow hall of the same base they were now passing through again was beginning to let down some of his defenses._

_The only bump along the way had come as they had been flying along the eastern coastline of Canada and the senior operative had been in the middle of passing on some of his wisdom._

_"Listen, every kid who ever went to a new school knows the secret to fitting in- copy everyone else. Spies do the same thing. If this was a deep cover mission, we'd tailor our wardrobe, the way we move and our behavior to attract our target. We'd do all the little things that say 'I'm your kind of guy'. But this isn't a deep cover mission, so all you've gotta remember is __que hablar Español."_

_"Uhh, Larry, what gave you the idea I could speak Spanish?" He had felt a sinking feeling as the older man's eyes had narrowed and his lips had thinned._

_"Your 201 file said you were born and raised in Miami an' you're telling me you don't speak a word of the language?"_

_He'd nodded mutely and waited for the explosion he was sure was coming._

_But instead of berating him, Larry had lost the frown and grinned at him, chuckling wryly. "Damn Kid, this is why you should never believe what it says in a co-worker's dossier. You're just gonna have to keep ya mouth shut an' learn to smile – a lot."_

_Stepping off the flight and back into the humidity of his home town had felt a little strange. Unwanted memories of his family had intruded on his thoughts, momentarily taking his mind off the assignment he'd been given._

"_You feeling homesick? You wanna pay a visit on your mom and pop on the way home?"_

_It seemed that the other spy had picked up on his change of mood and that would never do. He wouldn't have set foot in this place again voluntarily. Like he would ever want to do more than pass through Miami as quickly as possible..._

_In that spirit, he had used his local knowledge and the urge to get out of town to shave twenty minutes off the drive time between airfield and the rundown out of the way marina where their ride to Cuba had been waiting for them and had earned him a lot of praise from the older man._

With Cuba so close now, it was possible even in the dim half-light of the pre-dawn to make out the white foam of waves breaking against the rocky shoreline. The boat's driver cut the engines and let the small but powerful vessel drift on the gentle waves.

The two men made their final checks on their equipment and then climbed into the dry suits provided for them to make the half mile swim onto a secluded beach close to the city of Havana without soaking their clothes.

Michael could barely hear the conversation at the bow, but it appeared that the man running state-side support for this operation had his own ideas about how things would going to go.

"You call me on the radio when you're ready to be picked up. I'll come into the harbor, but you better be there ready to leave. We don't want to give them a chance to close the gates."

"I call you and you'll wait for us. I don't care how long. I don't want you disappearing on us if we're coming in hot," Larry growled back and then returned to his junior partner at the back of the boat. He flashed his pearly whites and nodded towards the inky dark water. "Come on, Kid."

Making landfall just as the sun began to come up, the two agents crouched down amongst a network of rock pools. Stripping off and stashing their dry suits, they straightened up their clothes and then removed the water proof wrappings which they had used to cover their luggage.

Combing his fingers through his neatly barbered dark brown hair, the master assassin ooked to his apprentice. "So, what do you think, Michael? If you were running this op, what would be your first move?"

Agent Westen looked across the rocks and the expanse of grassland beyond to the nearest structure, a large hotel which he remembered from the file was the Playa de Este, a three star hotel.

"We should go directly to the safe house and get set up. If we go through the hotel lobby, we'll look like guests there and we can order a taxi to take us into the old town."

"You're half right," the senior spy replied. "We will get the taxi from the hotel. But before we unpack our bags, we're gonna take a little side trip. A tour of the city is the best way to get a feel for a location and, I tell ya. if you know what questions to ask, you can gather a shit load of intel while sitting in the back seat of a taxi."

"We should set up our communications." Michael argued. "If anything happens-"

"You're outta the kiddies pool now, Michael. It's time to swim without your floaties. Stopping to set up a room we don't even know if we're gonna need is a waste of time. Let's see if Orborski really is travelling light on the security and check out the surrounding area. That way when we call in, we've actually got something to report. What do you say, Kid, that sound good to you?"

Setting up communications had always been one of the top priorities during training missions and with his first partner. However, there really wasn't any harm in getting first hand intel on the target. "You're right, Larry. Sorry -"

"Nothing to be sorry for, pal. How are you gonna learn if you don't make the occasional error?" The older man slapped him on the back once again. "As long as you don't repeat the same mistake twice, we'll be fine."

They walked along the shoreline, strolling casually so they looked like a couple of tourists out for an early morning walk until they reached the grounds of the large hotel. Then, moving through the lobby and out of the main doors, they waited for one of the small line of taxis to pull up before them, their equipment in tow.

Larry had their driver take them around the city, showing particular interest in the upscale district of Miramar. They drove up and down Quinta Avenida twice, taking in the sight of the Russian Embassy, a striking building shaped like a giant sword or a syringe depending on your point of view, and passing by several large ultra modern hotels intermixed with the magnificent residences belonging to the wealthy locals and other smaller embassies and consulates.

Directing the driver to take them off the main road, they criss-crossed the residential area, passing by the address they had for the retired Russian general several times. Finally, Larry ordered the driver to take them to the old town district and the location of their safe house.

Paying off the driver when they reached the harbor, Larry then had his junior partner carry the bags as they made their way along the narrow winding streets until they reached the address for the cramped room on the top floor above a book store.

**()()()()()**

As soon as they arrived at the dark musty smelling apartment, Larry had thrown open the set of narrow french doors which led out onto a tiny balcony, surrounded by old wrought iron railings which went up to waist height.

Staring out at the buildings opposite, the seasoned spy scanned the windows and the rooftop across the street, searching for any sign that they were under surveillance. Behind him he could hear the Kid moving around, the zips on the bags being opened and then the rustle of large sheets of paper being opened up.

Without even glancing over his shoulder, he knew exactly what the rookie was doing. The young man was following the procedures drilled into him first by a stint in the army and then by Tom Card and no doubt by Rayna Kopec, the _Ice Queen_ as his former partner had christened the blonde.

Having satisfied himself that there was no high powered rifles or directional microphones being aimed his way, Larry turned around to watch his protégée at work. The raven haired man had been busy in the few minutes he'd had his back turned.

The radio which would allow them to call for assistance if needed or just contact their new boss to pass on status reports sat upon a small table, ready to use, and there was a street map of the Miramar district pinned to the wall, which his younger colleague was now busy carefully marking out their target's residence.

"Whatcha doin', Kid?" the older man asked casually.

"Getting the room set up." The kid looked genuinely confused by the question.

_Had he ever been this green? No, it was the damn military training._

"Er, about the surveillance, Larry." Michael bent down to retrieve the binoculars and their personal radio comms. "Do you want the first shift or should I -?"

"You're kiddin', right?" He gave a disgusted snort. _It was time to give the baby bird a little nudge outta the nest._ "What the hell have Kopec and Card been filling your head with?"

Picking up one of the two bullet proof vests which Mr. Westen had pulled from the bags, Larry threw it straight at the youngster. "We're going in as soon as it's dark."

"But, we've only driven past the place. We need to -"

"Jeez, am I goin' to have to teach you everything? We're workin' against the clock here an' you want to spend a week learning the guards' schedule?" Taking a breath the wet work specialist paused. _No, now was not the time to attack his apprentice_...

"No, not a week, but we haven't even had time to watch a guard change."

"Listen, I'm sure you've heard this whole lecture from Tom Card. _In any search and capture mission, you have to balance speed with planning... _Well, I'm telling you kid, if you spend too much time planning, you run the very real risk of being spotted and that's when the target gets away. Now, we both heard the den mother's orders. She wants this guy on his way to the Balkans ASAP."

He stabbed a finger over the position of the mansion suspected of containing their target. "We're gonna set up a little disturbance at the front, so while the guards are dealing with that, we're going over the fence at the back of the property."

Agent Sizemore pointed to a spot where he had noted a blind spot on the security cameras. "Once inside, you're going to keeping shooting with that assault rifle of yours until we reach the target's room. At that point, we send in the stun grenades, grab our man and get out. We'll be back in the U.S by nightfall."

Larry watched as Mr. Westen put his vest on slowly. He could tell the younger man did not want to piss off his new partner, so he was stalling for a little time to think things through. The older operative laughed internally as the Kid covered the bulky article with his shirt once again before trying one more time to approach the subject of following procedures.

"Shouldn't we at least report in we're on site and planning the extraction?

"Yeah, okay, sure... if it'll make you feel better," Larry agreed as he checked the weapons.

When Michael had concluded the covert contact and turned around, Mr. Sizemore was standing right behind him.

"How good are you with explosives, Kid?"

"As good as I need to be," he answered, trying to work up some bravado.

The senior agent chuckled. "Okay, we'll see about that. Listen, Michael, I was working behind the Iron Curtain while you were still in training pants. Trust me, I know what I'm doing. Otherwise, your boss wouldn't have asked me teach you the ropes. So let's get this show on the road."

"But, what about -?"

"There is no _what ifs_ or _what about, _Kid. All you have to do is follow my lead." Larry was starting to get annoyed with all the questions, but he hid it well. "C'mon, stop pouting. This'll be fun."

**()()()()()**

As soon as dusk settled over the city, the two agents got into position.

"_When a pro plans an assault, they capitalize on the element of surprise. They attack aggressively, so their opponent has to react from a place of weakness,"_ had been the more experienced agent's advice as he had passed on the details of how they were going to run the rendition operation.

This was nothing like the training missions he had run or like the couple of missions he had gone on with Ms. Kopec before she became a station chief. But Mr. Westen was determined to follow the senior spy's lead as best he could.

"We, or rather _you, _are gonna rig that electrical substation we passed on the way here to blow and take out the power. I want lots of smoke, sparks, and bangs... Think you can do that?" Larry asked as they hunkered down out of sight amongst the overgrown foliage of a neighboring property.

"No problem," Michael answered doing his best to keep up the air of cool confidence in front of the senior officer.

"This is important, Michael, so no mistakes. I want the timer on the bomb set for five minutes, because a few seconds after the power goes out - I'm going to rig a car to slam into the front gates... Now, we do this right and those guys on guard are going to be so busy watching the front and the side that when we go over the back wall, they won't know what hit 'em."

"And then we do the whole _shooting-everybody-that-gets-in-the-way_ until we find the General?" This was one of many parts of his superior's plan he was uneasy about. "We don't know where the general is gonna be or how many guards he has inside. That could be a lot of bodies if we're supposed to not jeopardize US interests." During his career as a Ranger, Michael had frequently been dropped into hot spots with only limited intel, but with less limited resources and alot more body armor and fire power. Just the two of them and no hope of back up seemed just plain crazy.

"Kid, I can see you're not ready for the training wheels to come off just yet with that attitude. Come on, I saw your military record. This is _nothing_ you can't handle. Hell, you could probably do it all on your own if you'd just get it into your head that you're in the big leagues now. You remember what I said earlier, relax and have some fun. This'll be a cake walk, wait and see."

It was true. He had gone on tougher missions with far less information than they had now. Biting down on his lower lip, Michael nodded his assent. Larry Sizemore had been doing this type of work while he'd still been in middle school. The guy was a legend and hadn't that same legend just said he had total confidence in his new partner?

"You want me to go wire up the substation now?" Michael felt a small spark of pride at how fast he was moving up the Company food chain. A year out of training and one of the CIA's top agents was trusting him to have his back.

"Get to it, kid, and then go straight to the back. As soon as that bomb goes off, you get over that wall and I'll join you once the car hits the gates." The older man landed another slap on his junior colleague's shoulder. "You're doin' great, Michael. I can't wait to see the den mother's face when we bring this guy back gift wrapped in less than a day."

It took the newly minted spy about ten minutes to reach the substation, break into the metal container without being seen and attach a small piece of C4 to the junction box. With the timer on the detonator set for five minutes, he closed up the panel and made his way around to the high stone wall at the back of the residence.

First came the **BOOM** and crackle of the power being disrupted, followed by the loud voices of the sentries at the gate moving to check out the scene. Certain all attention would be focus on the far corner of the compound, Mr. Westen threw his bag over the wall and then he leapt, his fingers gripping the top before he hauled himself up and over.

As he landed, Michael heard the roar of a car engine at full throttle followed by the crash of whatever vehicle Larry had unofficially requisitioned impacting the heavy iron gates which had been securing the entrance. With his rifle unslung and at the ready, he waited for the arrival of his senior partner.

Moments later, Larry was at his side, the older man's eager expression and determined advance towards the large nineteen fifties style villa buoying up the younger agent's misgivings regarding the ability of a two-man team to take on an unknown amount of adversaries in a building, of which they had no clue as to the layout.

The pair entered the house and began to go through room to room, the sound of any shots they fired muffled by the supressors on the end of their rifle muzzles. This was familiar ground for Michael and he became more comfortable despite the danger, as he had cleared many a building as a Ranger. Considering they had never even run through a training session together the two agents worked well as a team, so well in fact that the few body guards inside had fallen easily to the duo.

They found the general in his study, the voice of the man urgently trying to call for help and sounds of the last two members of his personal guard preparing to defend their employer with their lives clearly heard through the thin wooden door.

"Give me a flash bang, kid... And then go make sure none of those guys outside try to join the party." Larry, with his back pressed back against the wall beside the door to the room, held out his hand for one of the stun grenades.

Unclipping the device from his belt, the younger man handed it over without thinking to ask why the older man didn't want to use the ones he was carrying on his person. Instead he turned his attention to the boots he could hear coming into the house, as the men outside realized the attack on the gates had been nothing but a diversion.

Doing his best to hold back the guards, Michael kept up a steady stream of fire, while behind him he heard the shatter of a door being kicked open and the boom of a stun grenade going off. Not wanting to reveal it was an American team kidnapping the general, he called out in Russian. _"We need to get out of here."_

Seconds later, he felt a tap on his shoulder and walking backwards as he continued to cover his partner, they exited the building. Tossing the cable tied, gagged and blindfolded general over the wall, Larry followed his prisoner, leaving his more limber associate to make the climb without protection of cover fire.

"_We should go." _Michael hauled their captive to his feet, his eyes focused on the early model Chevrolet Impala which they had stolen in the old town and used to get them across to Miramar.

"_Just a second, another quick lesson for you." _He pulled both the grenades from his own belt, pulled the pins and tossed them over the wall. _"Now we go – run!"_

The grenades went off and that was when he realized that this time they weren't the non-lethal flash bangs he'd been carrying. Larry had thrown two incendiary grenades, which were now lighting up the trees and bushes along the perimeter wall they had just scaled.

Dumping their captive into the trunk, Larry slammed the lid shut and beamed at his partner, gesturing for the rookie agent to follow him to the front of the vehicle and out of earshot of the prisoner.

"Good thinking back there, pal – calling out in Russian. You're a natural at this stuff. Let's keep it up, get our comrade thinking he's been called back to the Motherland. It might make him more talkative."

Larry took the wheel of the ancient muscle car, turned the radio on to mask their conversation from the man in the trunk and drove slowly away as the sirens of police cars and fire engines got closer. "By the time they put out that fire and discover what's happened, we'll be long gone."

"What was that, Larry? Why burn the place down? We were free and clear and they think they're looking for a spetsnaz team." Michael was having trouble keeping up with his more knowledgeable colleague. The assault on the villa had felt good and it had gone off exactly as Larry had promised him it would, but when the older man threw the incendiaries, they already had their prisoner and were in the clear.

"We're spies, kid. It's our job to move in the shadows. We're like ghosts. We leave no trace and there is nothing like a cleansing fire to remove any evidence we might have left behind. You were so worried about jeopardizing American interests? Well, thanks to your little inspiration and our Czech-made AK's and ammo, nobody is going to find anything to link good ol' Uncle Sam to this after little blaze finishes doing its magic."

The older agent paused as several police cars with their sirens blaring past by them on the opposite side of the road. "Get the guy with the boat on the horn and tell him to get his ass into the harbor at Ensenada de Guanabacoa. We'll be there in ten minutes... Oh, and tell him if he can't speak Russian, he needs to keep his mouth shut."

**()()()()()**

**Skopje, Macedonia, 72 Hours Later**

"Well, I have to say that was impressive work, Agent Sizemore." His new boss sat behind her desk, holding his report on the mission in one hand and Agent Westen's in the other. "Within twenty four hours of landing on the island, you managed to acquire the target and get him out of Cuba and, from what I've heard from the men I have watching the general, you must have put the fear of God into him."

"That was sort of a happy accident. We told the boat driver not to speak English around our guest, but it must have slipped his mind. I had to go up on deck and make it seem like Agent Pewterbaugh had been discovered and dealt with. It helped sell the story."

Larry chuckled. The memory of pretending to execute the man driving the boat and forcing the agent to dive over board and swim the rest of the way into Miami amused him. The idiot was lucky he hadn't put a bullet in him and it certainly helped the general, who had been standing in the hold with Michael's gun in his back, to understand the seriousness of his situation.

"It was Agent Westen's idea to convince Comrade Orborski that his own side had turned against him and he came up with in on the fly under heavy fire. What can I tell you? It worked. The kid's a natural."

"Mmm, yes, you've given Westen quite a lot of praise. He followed orders, was insightful and helpful during the planning stages, used his knowledge of local conditions to further the mission, displayed bravery under fire and, of course, initiative when dealing with the target."

"What can I say? The rookie did a good job. You can't tell me you're surprised, my dear."

"Yes, I'm aware that Westen is a very capable operative, _Agent_ Sizemore."

"Oh, sorry to step on your toes there, Chief. I figured you kept him around for a reason. I mean, you must have seen something in him to request him on your first time in the big show."

Larry had to admit that he was a bit surprised how good a job his partner had done. Sure, the Kid had bucked some, but that was to be expected. It was going to take awhile to get all that training out of his head. But overall the CIA's master assassin was pleased with his protégée.

"Give him a few years with the right type of guidance and he'll be unstoppable."

He watched as she processed his assessment of her former trainee. Now it was time to reel her the rest of the way in.

"Assuming you have no objections, I would be willing to see that Agent Westen gets the benefit of my vast experience. You already know how dicey chasing Soviet arms are and, with all the players changing, the Company knows that this little operation of yours could use my expertise. That's why I'm here. No reason the Kid can't profit from it at the same time, you know, make sure the newbie stays alive?"

Mr. Sizemore got to his feet, that patented charming smile he'd spent hours perfecting on display. He reached out and tapped the folder with the younger man's report in it. He had seen to it that their versions lined up and contained the right facts, devoid of any editorializing.

"Michael's got talent, we just need to keep him from getting his head chopped off while he's learning to use it, right, Chief? Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to unpack and wash out a few things. Never knew when duty will call."

It was all he could do to keep from laughing out loud as he closed the door behind him.

()()()()()()

Rayna Kopec was breaking in the new carpeting of her office.

Thinking about her last encounter with Larry Sizemore had her making circles of the room, trying to reconcile the official reports the two agents had turned in, the results of their mission and reasoning the older operative had laid out for allowing him to continue to partner up with Michael Westen with what her instincts were telling her.

She had been unhappy about how long they had left it before communicating their arrival at the safe house. It wasn't how she ran a field assignment and failure to keep mission command appraised of the situation in the field went against CIA standard procedure.

Westen had made a good decision in the field to pretend they were a spetsnaz team. But the reports they had picked up from their listening posts on the island indicated that they had done a little _too good_ a job of imitating an armed assault team and she was reasonably sure _that_ hadn't been her former trainee's idea.

But Larry was not an ordinary agent. His skill set meant he was used to following his own rules as long as he accomplished the goal and Rayna certainly couldn't argue that the wet work specialist hadn't succeeded in doing exactly what she had asked in record time no less. Further, his standing with the Agency meant that he usually got away with whatever he did, short of what had happened to end his career in the Soviet Union the first time, that is.

Regardless of what she thought of Sizemore personally, he was an effective asset of the Agency who's knowledge of the region would be invaluable to controlling the flow of arms that once belonged only in the hands of the Kremlin. The young man she had worked with for over a year had been very positive about the mission and his time spent with the older operative.

The Station Chief had known that the former Ranger needed some seasoning. Being ex-military herself, Rayna knew that despite all the time spent at the Farm, it took some field experience to react like a spy instead of a soldier.

She snorted as she stopped short of her chair. Sizemore certainly had no qualms about circumventing regulations and there was no arguing about how formidable a spy he was. At the moment, she was short-handed and the senior agent was willing to mentor the junior one.

There was no reason she could give as to why Larry Sizemore wasn't the perfect person to assist her in the mission she had been given here in the Balkans, albeit he was somewhat over qualified, which actually made it harder to argue against his presence here and there wasn't anything she could quantify in a report as to why Michael Westen shouldn't be trained by or work with a spy of that stature within the Company.

_But she would be watching them both very carefully nonetheless._


	6. Beni Hamidene, Algeria 1992

**_A/N_**_: Our apologies for not posting on time. RL just got entirely too real for a moment. __Perhaps Larry tried to poison one of us for telling all his secrets. ;-) W__e hope you will agree it was worth the wait. Thank you all for your enthusiasm for this twisted tale and our other story, __Be Brave Little Angel__. We appreciate all your support of our efforts to keep it burning! So cool to see a tweet from BurnNoticeUSA and JeffreyDonovan during #BurnerClub while we watched the Season 3 finale this week._

_We have subtitled this sixth installment of our story "The Seduction of Michael Westen."_

**()()()()()()()()()**

**Tiddis Ruins, Beni Hamidene, Algeria 1992**

_Whether it's betraying their country or committing a murder, getting someone to make a life-altering mistake is less about logic than passion. You have to create an environment fueled by emotion, make them rely on instinct, and make them believe they're in a do-or-die situation._

"What the hell?" Michael cursed and then twisted around, looking up at the senior field officer as Larry jerked the M14 out of his grip.

"Damn it, Kid, you blew it! The bastard musta spotted you! Get down there and flush him out _now_ and I'll deal with that little rat Dervishi."

The younger spy scrabbled to his feet, still confused as to what had actually happened. The former Ranger was positive he had been out of sight. _How the hell could he have seen me?_

"GO! Move it! He's onto us. We have to finish this here and now. If they get away, the whole operation is blown and it's _your_ head on Kopec's desk! _GO!_"

Michael scanned the sloping ground that offered little in the way of cover between their position and the armed Algerian, who was equally well trained and hidden away in the ruins.

"Are you deaf, Kid? It's us or them and they're getting away! I'll cover you, GO!" Larry brought the sniper rifle up and shot at the other figure, a fleeing Albanian arms merchant, who was giving a whole new meaning to the term gun runner.

With his senior partner's orders ringing in his ears, the ex-military man scrambled down the ridge line, his feet slipping and sliding over the rubble made by the crumbling construction as bullets flew past him. Spotting a clearing to the valley floor, Michael leapt the final six feet to the ground as the last of the Algerian's ammunition impacted all around him, narrowly missing his head. The spy drew the Vektor Z88 semi-automatic handgun he'd been supplied with and ran towards the last place he'd seen the other operative before the man had disappeared amongst the labyrinth of ancient bricks and piled high dirt, grit and sand.

Slowing his steps, the young agent entered the ruins, his whole body humming as every sense was on full alert. He had no illusions as to how dangerous the man he was hunting was. He had read up on their target, Djamel Zindane, before the operation and the Algerian Special Operations officer was a highly skilled killer with plenty of notches in his holster.

His military training was screaming at him that conducting a search of such terrain without full armor was idiocy. But a faint trickle of stones falling sent him creeping forward at a faster pace, his eyes scanning all the nooks and crannies big enough to hide a man.

The sudden crack of a sniper rifle took Michael's attention away only for a second. But as it turned out, that second of inattention was all Zindane had been waiting for. The next thing Agent Westen knew, he had walked straight into an ambush. Two heavily booted feet caught him squarely in the back, sending the dark haired man to his hands and knees, his South African made knockoff handgun spinning out of his grip, landing six feet away along with his sunglasses which he had bought in the market in Tunis less than three days ago.

_When a pro plans an ambush, they capitalize on the element of surprise. They attack aggressively so their opponent has to react from a place of weakness._

Acting on pure survival instinct, the American was on his feet in an instant, but not for long as another powerful kick sent him back to the ground. But at least this time Michael managed to bring his opponent down with him. Getting a hand on his adversary's pants leg, he managed to knock the man down, unfortunately right on top of himself.

Blow followed blow as the two men fought to end the other's life, grappling and rolling across the dusty stone littered ground. They both were taking a helluva beating, but he'd had plenty of those and there was _no way_ he was going to be the one to die here today.

The Algerian was older and heavier, their position on the ground to his advantage. But Michael had speed on his side and a lifetime of combat experience, from a home life which resembled a war zone to actual battlefields across the globe as a Ranger and now as a spy. The American operative used that burning rage he carried around inside himself at all times to get upright again and fists, elbows, knees and feet were all used to try to pummel the other guy into submission. But Michael was oblivious to the pain being inflicted upon him.

However, giving away close to fifty pounds and several inches, it wasn't long before the young spy found himself pinned to the ground. With sharp rocks and the remnants of bricks digging into his back, he could only gasp and struggle as the Algerian tried to choke him.

"Who are you?" the older man growled, tightening his grip when his enemy didn't answer.

His vision was fading in and out and his lungs felt like they were going to burst at any second. But none of that stopped the dark haired man from fighting back. Reaching down his body, his fingers found the hilt of his knife. As soon as his hand closed about the handle, he drew it from the sheath and plunged it straight into his attacker's thigh.

Zindane yelled in pain and fell to the side while Michael took several deep gulps of air through his bruised and swollen throat. On their feet again, the two men cautiously circled each other, both now armed with wickedly sharp blades. His adversary was limping heavily as blood continued to pour from his shredded thigh.

_There's a cold math to blood loss: the more you lose, the weaker you get. And when you're on a clock like that, it pays to act no matter how desperate your plan might be because, if you wait, you may not have the chance…_

Michael knew his opponent didn't have the luxury of taking his time. Soon he would be too weak from blood loss and shock. _If he let his eyes drift away from the other man, leaving him an opening to attack… _And because the wounded man had so little time left, the special operations officer did exactly what Agent Westen hoped he would.

For a few brief seconds, the two battered men were locked in close against each other, guard hands seeking to hold back the knife that was attempting to end their lives. In a rush of desperate strength, the Algerian pushed the blade towards the American's throat…

()()()()()

**Skopje, Macedonia – Six Weeks Earlier**

_An interrogation typically begins with deprivation and discomfort. That means the thermostat cranked all the way up, or all the way down, depending on the climate, uncomfortable furniture, dim lights that strain the eyes and, if there's food, not much of it. It's all about making sure you're exhausted and vulnerable before your interrogator even sets foot in the door. _

Tom Card's lecture of what to expect during time in captivity with hostile forces had echoed in Michael's head as he had stood watching his new partner demonstrate some techniques that were not, he'd been fairly certain, in the CIA manual. The difference between "_W__hat they teach you on the Farm and what happens in the real world,"_ Larry had assured him.

Vladimir Orborski's time in the basement of an Agency safe house had certainly started out by the book. Since Mr. Westen had been the one to improvise their cover as Russians in the employ of one of the former GRU general's rivals, Larry had made the argument that they should be the ones doing the questioning and that Michael should take the lead initially.

Much to her former trainee's amazement, Station Chief Kopec had agreed.

_Getting useful information is about creating a new reality for the interrogation subject with no hope of escape or freedom. You control every aspect of their world: if they eat, if they sleep, even whether it's day or night. When it's time to ask questions, you want them disoriented, anxious, wondering who you are and what you can do to them. You have to make them understand that their entire future their hopes, their dreams, and every breath they will ever take from then on, it all depends on one thing: Talking. _

Michael had followed what he had been taught to the letter: isolation, sleep and sensory deprivation, followed by sensory bombardment in stress positions. Larry had given him a crash course on how to perform water boarding in a dark room. Two weeks after his surprise trip from his retirement home in Havana, Comrade Orborski had been very unhappy, but not _quite_ ready to talk yet. GRU officers as a rule didn't crack easily and Vlad was no exception.

_Interrogating a captive isn't just about what you know about them, it's about what they about you. If they think you're a foreign intelligence agency, they'll behave on way. If they think you're rivals, they'll behave another. It's a choice you only get to make once, so you have to do your homework and get it right the first time._

Mr. Sizemore had then made the argument that it was time to convince their target that they were who they said they were, which meant acting like the pair of brutal thugs they were pretending to be. That was when Michael education on interrogation had truly begun.

_I know you've heard this one, Kid. "Violence perceived is violence achieved." I bet Card taught you that you don't want someone screaming, you want them answering questions. You know what? I've found that people are a lot more cooperative about answering questions once they've had a chance to scream. _

Because if anyone had an encyclopedic knowledge of torture techniques employed the various clandestine and criminal groups throughout the former Soviet Union and how to imitate them, it was Senior Agent Larry Sizemore, which was probably why his junior partner had been instructed to block the cameras at various times and various angles, all the while making it look like happenstance occurring during the heat of moment.

Well, more accurately, _many, many heated moments_...

_In a weakened state, you wanna avoid pressure on your carotid artery. It blocks the blood flow to your brain and you black out in four seconds. _Another new trick Larry taught him_._

"Okay, help me get him up," his mentor instructed, taking one side of the nearly naked man who had collapsed face first onto the solid metal table in front of him. Having no means to stop himself with his bleeding wrists tightly bound behind his back, his arms painfully stretched almost out of their sockets, the former Soviet military man had hit hard.

_A good interrogator paints a picture of the world outside for a detainee. Whatever he's holding on to, you take it away. _Those had been Tom Card's words. But Mr. Westen wondered if this training officer had really understood the true meaning of _whatever_.

Sitting the unconscious and beaten man upright again, Michael could almost see his own breath in the freezing cold stone room and Orborski's skin had taken on an almost purplish hue during the last few hours wherein Larry had explained what it would take for the general to remedy his new reality and achieve more comfortable living conditions.

_Under ideal circumstances, a good interrogation unfolds slowly. But circumstances are not always ideal. If you're operating on a clock sometimes you have to get right in your enemy's face and turn up the heat. _Mr. Sizemore was a master of turning up the heat, subzero or not.

"Listen up, Kid. When Vlad here comes to, you're going to let him that we're done with him."

A blade sailed through the air and Michael caught it neatly. He looked quizzically from his partner to their captive to the karmabit in his hand. He waited quietly for Larry to give him the second part of his instructions. He knew he wasn't supposed to kill their prisoner outright, but the young spy wasn't sure exactly how far to take the illusion that the unfortunate Russian was about to suffer a very painful and slow death.

_The threat of rendition is usually more persuasive than the fear of immediate torture. For prisoners who want to believe that they've hit rock bottom, the idea that their circumstances could get even worse is a powerful motivator. It's kind of like the grass always being greener, only in reverse. _

"The two biggest kids on the block in the arms game back home in Russia are Leonid Minin, who runs things through a Russian arms manufacturing company called Aviatrend, and Viktor Bout, who had the Kremlin in his pocket. I happen to know that one of our friend here's biggest rivals before he retired was in bed with Bout. So, my guess is the general got his guns from Minin. We let it slip that we might be persuaded to sell him to Minin instead of taking him to Viktor Anatolyevich Bout and I think Vlad will to try to save his own ass."

_Being a spy, you have to get comfortable with the idea of people doing bad things for good reasons; doing good things for bad reasons. You do the best you can._

He'd been in plenty of knife fights as a teenager when that had been the weapon of choice back in the day, but the senior spy had been teaching Michael how to inflict the most pain with the least amount of actual damage at Comrade Orborski's expense the last day or two.

_It would be most effective if you would cut the carotid artery just under the left ear if you want him to bleed out quickly. Otherwise, you need to cut a shallow line, avoiding the major arteries until you're ready to finish them off. Now, if you want them to die slowly…_

Larry's lecture was echoing in his ears as he pressed the wickedly curved weapon to the helpless man's throat, causing a tiny trail of blood to dribble down from the point of contact with the blade. He stared into the tormented face of his captive and played his part. It took a beat longer than it should have to stop when their detainee tried shouting at him.

And he saw a look of approval in his partner's eyes when he straightened up and snarled in Russian that the man had better not be wasting their time. The general was trying to tell them who in Aviatrend's organization had supplied him the arms and who to come take him off their hands for a price, but the delirious desperate man could barely speak at this point.

_One of the hardest things to do in a fight is to make it look like you're trying to kill someone without doing permanent damage. They don't teach any half-moves in combat training. There are moves designed to kill and maim as efficiently as possible._

Even though Michael knew that two CIA agents were going to come through the door to _rescue_ Vladimir Orborski from his _Russian captors _as soon as Larry had all the names he needed of the man's suppliers_, _it hadn't stopped the rush of adrenaline that had coursed through his veins as weapons were pointed in his direction and _the battle was on!_

()()()

"Westen, what did you think you were doing?"

"Sambo, it's Russian mixed martial arts. You can't fight like an American if you're supposed to be a Russian-"

"I know what Sambo is," Rayna Kopec told him dryly. "What I want to know is did you _really_ think it was necessary to break Stanwyck's nose to sell your cover?"

"Hey, the Kid was just doing his job," Larry interrupted, laughing lightly. "And the CIA's new best friend is so grateful to be rescued that you, my dear, now have a former Soviet head honcho singing like a canary in your tight little clutches right now."

Larry could tell the Station Chief was loath to admit it. The pair had succeeded in breaking Orborski and getting them the intelligence they needed to start tracking the shipments going from one of Russia's biggest arms manufacturer's into to various paramilitary groups in the Balkans as well as into embargoed African hot spots all over that continent.

"Alright, you've got the reports. Find out when Aviatrend's next shipment is headed out to somewhere illegal and you'll follow where it goes—after we discuss where you're going."

"Whatever you say, Chief," Agent Sizemore smirked at her qualifier. The little woman wasn't slow on the uptake. She'd already figured out that he was used to running his own show, which made reminding her that _he knew_ who was _really in charge_ all the more fun.

"Great job, Michael," the older man enthused. He clapped the junior agent on the shoulder, causing his apprentice to stumble slightly as they left their boss' office to head back to their housing to get cleaned up. "You've broken your first GRU cherry and a general at that. You are on the fast track here, Kid. Too bad I was playing dead," he chuckled low, a nasty sound. "I would have loved to see you pop that pup in the snout."

The kid must have felt a little bad about getting carried away with playing his cover from his expression. But no matter, the junior agent had performed better than he had expected. Larry had had his doubts, from time to time, whether Michael would follow his instructions.

He knew he couldn't push his protégé too far too fast, but there was that well spring of darkness within the younger man which just needed the right encouragement to come out. There had been some bumps in the road, a few missteps, especially with the waterboarding, but overall his apprentice had taken to running his first interrogation surprisingly well.

"You had to do it," Larry advised. They headed through the office, where the analysts who were working on the intel had given the two operatives a wide berth. "You couldn't let the idiot compromise weeks of work because he doesn't know how to do his damned job."

Michael nodded his silent agreement. Apparently his mind already turning to task of finding their next target, although his mentor could see that the kid was not missing the looks that were being shot his way. He had never cared for the Station's Chief's new trainee and neither did Mr. Westen it seemed. _It had taken just a slip of the wrist for him to miss and..._

_Yeah... he could work with that._

"I'm proud of ya, Michael. Now let's see how fast you can plow through that intel and get us a name and shipment. Then I'll _really_ teach ya something about life in the real world.

()()()()()()

**Porti Vlorë, Albania****– Four Weeks Earlier**

_Intelligence gathering tends to involve a lot of number crunching. Analysts have computers especially programmed to turn raw data into useful information. But, as with repairing a radio or dressing a wound, in the field it's important to be able to do the same work with what you can find in a third-rate hotel room._

Larry had watched as he had spread the reports over every flat surface in their three-room flat with a shared bath at the end of the hall. As accommodations went, it apparently had been substandard to what the senior spy had been accustomed to, but having slept in cars in his youth and worse places as a Ranger and a new agent in Afghanistan, Michael had only been marginally aware of his surroundings. His mind had been intensely focused on the information that had been laid out before him.

_It takes a while to learn how to read intelligence files. They start as stacks of unrelated documents, but stick with it long enough and a pattern can emerge. Of course, not all intelligence is reliable, which normally means when you're done checking the file you have to check the source, although he doubted that Orborski had lied to them in this instance._

"Minin is moving shipments through a middle man in Romania, who has a front company, Talbot Transport. Talbot moves the arms through Serbia and Kosovo, where enough guns fall off the truck to keep everyone happily killing each other before the rest leave outta Porti Vlorë in Albania for parts unknown," he had declared after a several days of concentration.

Mr. Sizemore's praise had been effusive and even Station Chef Kopec had seemed impressed with his work. With less opposition than he had been anticipating, he and the senior spy had been given a car and sent off through the mountains of western Macedonia. Winding their way up, down and around before crossing the border with Albania, the two agents had arrived in the port city on the Adriatic Sea eight hours later, thanks to their papers and the right amount of local currencies to grease any itchy palms they might have encountered.

_Identifying an illicit weapons shipment from a specific country isn't as simple as checking manifests or spotting a flag on a ship. It's too easy for arms dealers to fake both. But phony paperwork and false flags won't stop crew members from telling you the straight story. Chat up the right deckhand, and you can learn where every shady piece of cargo came on board. There's no substitute for human intelligence. _Card's advice had been spot on_._

So, after a long day's drive, there had been an even longer night of buying rounds and _chatting up_ the Albanian equivalent of long shore men on the pretext of being in town looking for work. Their quickly assembled covers as ethnic Albanians from Greece helping to integrate them easily in with local assets cultivated in a country that was in an economic and social free fall, like much the rest of the Soviet Bloc since end of the communism.

_One of the biggest challenges in covert operations is working with civilian assets. It's often as much about keeping the asset from falling apart as it is about gathering intelligence... kind of like babysitting… only with a gun to your head. _Card had laughed at his own joke_._

But there'd been _a lot_ of guns involved in Larry's brand of babysitting assets. He'd been a little dazed by the way the covert operative could move seamlessly from being an affable new best friend to someone's worst nightmare in the blink of an eye. There seemed to be no end to the man's ability to read people and situations, instinctively knowing whether cash, a kind word or causing extreme pain was the right way to handle any given situation, though Mr. Sizemore's preferred method involved more brutal coercion than benevolent coaxing.

And Agent Westen, as he had been so often urged by his mentor, had watched and learned.

By the end of the week, they had a target. Valon Dervishi was a man with interests and connections from Tripoli to Tunis to Algiers. Mr. Sizemore had relocated them to the Hotel Lux Vlore, an accommodation more in line with Larry's liking and they'd shifted identities again, becoming a couple of international men of mystery, businessmen whose business was brokering deals among the rich and infamous while they awaited their orders, which the senior operative was confident would be to follow Mr. Dervishi to his next stop in Africa.

_You'd be surprised how often covert operatives pose as "international men of mystery." Fantasies about glamorous, covert ops can be extremely useful to exploit; though some secret agent fantasies are more useful than others._

Had Michael not been enjoying the contrast of living in a higher end hotel and perks of being on an Agency expense budget with a spy of Larry's stature, he might have had opportunity to wonder why Mr. Sizemore seemed to be calling the shots on their mission. As it was, the younger man hadn't enjoyed the company of so many beautiful women in such a style since his days of trolling the Art Deco Districts Miami night life not quite a decade ago, the older man having thoughtfully booked them into separate rooms both with king-sized beds.

_No matter how good your cover identity is, you've got to sell it, and that's not always easy. Sometimes you have to decide just how committed you are to pretending you are who you say you are. _Not only did his partner approve, but Larry had seemed to enjoy seeing to it they'd been having a good time, although the senior spy had insisted that this was all part of their cover needed to get near a man of the Albanian gun runner's power and influence.

_Covert ops has its perks. You travel, make your own hours and expense most of your meals. Of course, lots of people will want you dead someday._ _It's a matter of trade-offs._

"This is the life, Kid," his colleague informed him with a broad smile. "Tailored suits, private planes, all on an expense budget and we get _paid_ to make the world a _better_ place." The mocking edge of his laughter was very subtle. "Sure beats the hell outta jumping outta helicopters into some damn hot jungle LZ in the dead of the night, doesn't it, Michael?"

_There's a reason they call the spy trade "the hall of mirrors." You can never know for sure whether you're in control or you're being played. If you do it long enough, you learn to trust your instincts. But sometimes, the closer you are, the harder it is to know where you stand._

As they settled into the company-provided Learjet 36 that would take them from Vlorë to Rome, where they would pick up their target again on a commercial flight, albeit in first class seats, out of the Fiumicino Airportinto the Tunis-Carthage Airport, Mr. Westen found himself agreeing with the older man. He knew his own rapidly rising status had as much to do with whom he was partnered as who he was, but the ex-Ranger was determined to prove that he was an asset to the Agency in his own right and he was on track _to do just that_.

()()()()()

**Tunis, Tunisia ****– Two Weeks Earlier**

_Grabbing someone who travels with protection is about finding the moments when they're least protected. Fortunately, even the most paranoid insist on doing some things alone._

And that is how Valon Dervishi had found himself suddenly devoid of the company of the escort Mr. Sizemore had hired to entertain the Albanian for the evening, had discovered himself to be equally devoid of the companionship of his body guards and had found himself in an abandoned building on the outskirts of Tunis. As it turned out, their current captive enjoyed his time in the company of the two Company Men far less than the hapless Vladimir Orborski had. Unfortunately for the arms dealer, he had not been locked in the basement of a CIA safe house with cameras monitoring every move of his captors, which had resulted in a quicker but far more painful interrogation than the one the Russian had received.

_When you're interrogating someone who thinks they have nothing left to lose, you have to give them another reason to talk. If you're looking to motivate someone who's cut off, alone and convinced they're going to die, you can't beat revenge._

Whether it was his discomfort with the increasingly bloody cross-examination or just an inspiration born of desperation to complete the next phase of their mission, Michael decided on convincing the man that his buyer in Africa had contacted his supplier in Russia directly and they were from the _home office_ investigating _who in the supply chain had talked_.

And while Larry seemed annoyed at first over being interrupted while he worked, the older agent had quickly grasped where his junior partner had been going with his gambit. Their unrehearsed but well played ploy of talking about their employers' business in front of their prisoner had rather quickly resulted in their detainee giving them the name of his end user.

_Whenever you get a fresh piece of intelligence in the field, you have to decide carefully who you're going to share it with. Because every asset you talk to, agency you work with and resource you update brings along a new set of problems. _Card's lecture on shifting nature of field operations had proven all too true and their hostage soon found himself bound and gagged albeit with his wounds bound up under a heavy tarp in the bed of their Toyota Hilux

It had been a long drive in the dusty darkness to the nearest available CIA safe house while they decided what to do with their latest revelation. Michael had always been capable when it came to thinking on his feet, a hard-won legacy of growing up with Frank Westen, but he had to reluctantly admit that there was a bigger picture in play that he hadn't fully grasped.

The Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS) – or Department of Intelligence and Security as it was currently known – had been led by one man, General Mohamed Mediene, also known as Toufik, since its most recent incarnation. It had been used by those in power to combat the threat of an elected Islamist government when the Islamic Salvation Front's surprising domination of the first two rounds of free legislative elections in December 1991 had caused the authorities to intervene in January of 1992, canceling the elections.

The resulting civil insurgency between the Front's armed wing, the aptly named Armed Islamic Group, and the national security forces of the ruling FLN had created a market for arms, of which their new target, Djamel Zidane, had apparently been working both ends.

A highly placed member of the Algerian special operations community who was obtaining weapons for his country and current enemies of his country seemed like someone who needed reporting to the present authorities. But Mr. Sizemore had indicated that there might be more to it than met the eye. Certain types of government had been known in the past to create apparent threats in order to have an excuse for seizing power. Larry let him know they needed to check in, which completed surprised Michael given the senior spy's penchant for making decisions on his own as to what was in the best interests of the mission.

But as he helped his mentor unload the Agency's newest albeit unhappy asset, Michael Westen couldn't quite keep the smile from his latest success in the field off of his face.

()()()()()

**El Kala, Algeria ****– One Week Earlier**

Mr. Sizemore couldn't have been more pleased, short of a gratifying homicide, which he could still technically commit within the next 24-72 hours. He had contacted the little woman back in Skopje and she had actually proved useful. Local CIA assets had confirmed that Djamel Zidane had been suspected of double dealing, although there had been no solid proof. Toufik would be delighted to discover the truth on the Agency's dime. Should the rumors prove truth, then the head of the DRS would surely have been equally pleased to have the Company take care of his personnel problem for him. The CIA hadn't wanted local assets involved in the operation and Larry had the perfect answer to everyone's problem.

A quick call to Mr. Meachem and the orders had filtered down relatively quickly through the chain of command. He and Michael were just eating dinner while finishing their second day in their Algerian safe house when they had received the communication he'd expected from HQ Macedonia that their orders were to terminate with extreme prejudice one Agent Zidane.

"Go ahead and feed our guest," the senior spy requested. "We'll be needing him for the next part of the operation. Bring him out here when you're done. We need to chat."

He was fairly certain Michael was puzzled by the relative kindness they had shown their prisoner thus far. Larry had allowed his apprentice to indulge his Boy Scout nature, and skill set, sewing up all the little holes he had cut into their captive the other day. Then they had loaded the arms merchant into the bed of their Agency-provided pick-up truck for another very uncomfortable ride under a tarp but mercifully after dark into the neighboring country.

The shaken but silent Mr. Dervishi was told in small but no uncertain words with a mixture of encouraging smiles and serious scowls what his new role in life would be, otherwise it would be a very short life indeed. The Albanian was informed that he had been cleared of having any part in this very bad business. However, the men they worked for back in Russia were very disappointed that he had apparently failed to cover his tracks sufficiently such that his buyer had been able to contact his supplier in Romanian. Talbot would be dealt with; but, as an atonement for his sins, Valon would be arranging a meeting with his buyer.

Mr. Sizemore put a map of the Port of Algeria in front of the formerly enterprising weapons dealer and explained exactly where he would lure Djamel Zidane so that his young friend there could dispose of him with a sniper rifle. Once the soon-to-be-ex-Algerian Special Ops Agent was dead, Mr. Dervishi could walk, well more accurately run away, and their employers would be contacting him to resume their business arrangements. Should the unemployed arms dealer fail to complete his assignment to demonstrate his loyalty...

Larry didn't have to finish the sentence to know that he had clearly made himself understood. He held a cell phone out to their new asset and then nodded towards the dark haired man sitting behind their prisoner. Mr. Westen chambered a round and pressed the pistol into the back of the man's skull. "Make the call and no deviating from the script."

The call completed and Valon Dervishi being secured back in his cell for the night by his partner, the CIA's premier wet work specialist began to plan their next move, making a shopping list to be delivered by their local assets on the ground before the end of the next day or there would surely be hell to pay. He loved it when a plan came together for him personally and professionally. He knew Michael's military record said he was a top sniper.

Now, he would see what would happen when he took that rifle away from his protégée It was time to learn if his apprentice had the guts and the skill to kill up close and personal with his bare hands. As a Ranger, he'd had the benefit of lots of equipment and back-up.

Now, his mentor would see what Michael Westen was made of without either.

()()()

_It's important to keep your guard up at the end of an operation. Once you've found your target, won their trust and made a deal, it's natural to wanna relax a bit. But, the fact is, it's exactly the time to be most careful. When money's on the line and things go wrong, they tend to go very, very wrong. _That bit of Tom Card's advice still seemed like solid wisdom.

Because from where Michael was sitting behind the wheel of the Toyota Hilux, trying to keep an eye on their criminal asset without getting too close as the cramped streets of the old city became more congested with human and animal traffic as well as vehicles, things looked like they could go very wrong at any minute despite the precautions taken.

_Spies don't keep a lot of prisoners. When you hold someone, you only learn what they tell you. Let them go and you can learn what they do and where they go._

"You don't have to get too close, Kid," Larry advised as they followed their fleeing felon from the streets of El Kala towards the west. The older man had a large electronic device balanced on his knees, cumbersome for something allegedly so state of the art. "We've got trackers in his cell phone, in his wallet, in his shoes, in his belt and on the car he's in. So we don't need to worry about losing him. We need to worry about him spotting our truck."

"In that case, I'm surprised you didn't manually insert one," Mr. Westen remarked wryly.

"Maybe I'll let you hold 'em down next time we try it," the senior spy smirked.

The bulky device, similar to the prototype "string ray" machines used by the FBI, was the latest tech toy in the tracking realm developed for the CIA. It had a longer range and greater accuracy, which was good in that their target was preparing to head out onto the plains. Unlike the busy streets of the small Algerian port, there wasn't much place to hide on the winding roads once both of the vehicles were out of the major traffic.

_Just because someone believes you are who you say you are, that doesn't mean he'll do what you want him to do._

And Valon, who's name meant _seething_ in Albanian, was apparently doing just that, because the arms dealer was definitely deviating from the plan and Michael could only attribute it to the fact that the man must have been furious with whomever had gotten him into that little encounter with his _manufacturer. _But Larry seemed confident, even though the gun runner was now turning his stolen 4x4 off the main road, nowhere near the city of Algiers.

Once their target had gone off the reservation so to speak, Mr. Sizemore seemed to no longer care that their unwilling asset was not doing what he was supposed to. In fact, it seemed to please him that Mr. Dervishi knew who was on his back bumper, so to speak.

Three hours circling through the surprisingly green highways in the foothills of the nearby ranges, the covert operatives parked their pick-up a short distance away from where Valon had abandoned his ride and gone ahead on foot towards the Tiddis ruins, a popular site containing the remains of an ancient Roman trading town that had recently been closed.

There was no one else around and the late afternoon sun beat down on their heads. They watched through spotter and sniper scopes respectively as the haggard man before them searched amongst the tumbled-down stones, thick rock walls of what once been buildings and the plethora of archways still standing. They were up on the ridgeline with a clear view of most of the area before them. They had good cover, but it was _so_ _damned hot and dry_…

"Remember, Michael, you take out Zindane and you leave our new friend there to me."

_The most dangerous time in any operation is just as everything is coming together. You never know whether you're about to get a pat on the back or a bullet to the back of the head. Of course, there's not much you can do but act like everything is fine._

The supplier and the buyer were having what looked like a heated argument in the shallow valley floor below them. The pair were circling each other and shouting, wild hand gestures accompanying the verbal abuse they were heaping upon one another. Mr. Westen cursed internally, but waited patiently for Djamel to stop moving to get him in the cross-hairs.

He had no idea how, but as Michael lined up his shot on Zindane, the _damn man_ looked straight towards where he and Larry were hidden along the top perimeter above the crumbling remnants of ancient commercial center. _He had a fraction of a second before…_

Even as his finger slipped inside the trigger guard, something brushed his elbow. He heard the sharp retort of the rifle being fired and saw the puff of dust and grit through the scope as the bullet narrowly missed its intended target. He watched in frustration for another second while the DRS Special Operations Officer and the Albanian war merchant fled in opposite directions, the former into the ruins and the latter across the antique stone road back towards his vehicle. _Sonuvabitch, they were getting away! What the hell happened?_

()()()

**Tiddis Ruins, Beni Hamidene, Algeria – Twenty Minutes Later **

For a few brief seconds the two men were locked in close against each other, guard hands seeking to hold back the knife that was attempting to end their lives. In a rush of desperate strength, the Algerian pushed the blade towards the American's throat…

But in the end it was the stronger man, the one who wasn't bleeding to death, that with a roll of his wrist slipped his knife between the other man's ribs and then, with a twist of the blade, ripped a devastating hole in his opponent's left lung.

Michael felt the hot rush of blood and air from the punctured lung and then the weight of the older man as the Algerian crumbled onto him before falling to the ground. The young spy slowly sank to his knees, sighing deeply and then listening dispassionately while his target drew another couple of tortured breaths before lying quiet.

The sound of someone approaching had Mr. Westen back on his feet, weapon at the ready. But it was his mentor who appeared at the site of the bloody carnage.

"Good work there, kid," Larry declared happily as soon as he arrived at the scene of the battle. Kneeling down the senior field agent rolled his junior partner's victim on to his back. "Right up into the left lung, I wouldn't be surprised if you nicked his heart too. Damn if you're not a natural at this job, Michael."

Now he had his breath back, the dark haired covert operative stared at the corpse and then over to where his gun had ended up. "He disarmed me."

"So what? Don't put yourself down, Michael. It was a good first-time hands-on kill. Hey, you should be proud. This was a helluva mission, Kid. Ya kidnapped top GRU brass, took out a major arms smuggling route and capped it off by finishing off a double dealing dirty spy."

Michael nodded, basking in the praise for a moment when he had expected to be chewed out for missing the sniper shot and necessitating the fight. After picking up his pistol, the younger man next went to retrieve his sun glasses, pausing as he saw one lens was cracked.

"They were new," he muttered disgustedly before tossing the useless shades away.

"Don't worry about it. You can buy more. Hell, expense it. You deserve it."

That was when the young spy remembered something. Returning to the body of his opponent, Michael walked a few paces past the dead man. There on the dirt were the aviator shades the Algerian special ops guy had been wearing that had gone flying in their fight. The covert operative held them up to the sun. They were dusty but undamaged.

Blowing the eyewear off with a quick puff of air, Michael donned the Oliver Peoples Victorys sun glasses and smiled. Surprisingly, they fit like they were made for him.

"He doesn't need them anymore," he reasoned. The young agent continued grinned as the older man beamed back at him, the satisfied smirk nearly splitting his face in two.

"Okay, Kid, let's get this mess cleaned up and get back to civilization."

()()()()()()

**Skopje, Macedonia – One Week Later **

Station Chief Kopec stood in Agent Stanwyck's office watching the building monitor screens.

Since she knew her assistant was on the first floor tending to the coffee, she had gone to his desk to pick up Agent Westen's version of what had transpired over the last four weeks, having just read Mr. Sizemore's take on the mission, a glowing review of the young man's performance full of praise for his cleverness and taking the blame for the missed shot.

_That_ had caught her attention and she wasn't willing to wait until Stanwyck got back with her coffee to read Westen's version of the events. As it was, Rayna wasn't sorry she'd walked in when she did. Although she probably shouldn't have laughed, her job was stressful enough without letting a little humor slip in where it could. At least no one else had heard her chuckling at the look on her trainee's face when the _dynamic duo_, as they had been dubbed by the analysts on the second floor, had come through the front security door.

She noted that both of them had been wearing nearly identical tailored navy blue suits as they came into the three-story private house that doubled as the Balkans Station Chief's HQ in the region. Alan Stanwyck had frozen like a deer in the highlights, the death grip he had on the two steaming mugs in his hands threatening to shatter the porcelain.

"_Agent Stanley, that looks like it hurts. Sorry about that," _Michael said, though the tone was hardly regretful_." How's the nose, anyway?"_ He was smirking at the two swollen black eyes and severely discolored deviated septum on the face of the man before him.

"_It's Stanwyck,"_ the trainee answered tersely, his bruised visage a mixture of fear and loathing_. "Excuse me…"_ It was more of a demand that a request as the other two operatives were blocking his access to the staircase.

"_I think you need go easy there on the caffeine, pal,"_ Larry advised as he and Michael barely moved back the half step necessary to let the man by. _"You're way too jumpy."_

"_The other one is Chief Kopec's coffee."_

"_Really?" _Larry moved back into the younger man's path_. "And what blend does the little lady drink? Something imported or the local sludge?"_

"_You'll have to ask her." _

And with that, the affronted young agent pushed past the pair and ascended the stairs. Rayna continued to watch as her former trainee and his new partner lingered in the lobby another moment. The raven haired man was handing a karmabit to the older agent, who pushed it back towards the other operative. Westen shook his head and Sizemore smiled, tucking the knife in Westen's jacket pocket.

"_Keep it, Kid,"_ she heard Larry say. _"You earned it. Consider it a belated birthday present. It's been christened with Russian __and__ Algerian blood now. I'd say it's been lucky for you."_

Michael pushed the expensive sunglasses higher on his nose as he thanked his mentor, smiling back as Mr. Sizemore said_, "Not as nice as those new shades you picked up at Tiddis."_

"_It wasn't as easy as that. I worked hard for these," _Mr. Westen returned, taking the amber glasses off and putting them in the inner pocket of his form fitting new suit coat_. "Seemed a shame to let them go to waste; he wasn't going to be using them anymore." _

As the duo turned and climbed up the staircase, Ms. Kopec met the unfortunate Mr. Stanwyck coming out of his office and took her mug from him. "Thank you," she acknowledged and went back into her place, biting her lip just a little. The conversation between the two agents coming towards her office had disturbed her, but the look on the battered man's face had threatened to blow her composure and that just wouldn't do.

Rayna left the door open and settled behind her desk.

"Go ahead, Kid," Larry urged. "I'll be out here having a chat with your friend. Maybe teach him how to block that move of yours next time somebody pulls it on him."

The blonde gestured towards the entryway and the seat before her with a tilt of her head. She had worked with the man before her long enough that he knew what she'd meant.

"Good work, Westen, but I'm sure you know that already. Your partner has been more than generous in his evaluation of your performance. The cover you instituted with Orborski paid off. You and your colleague successfully broke a GRU general without breaking _too_ many Geneva Convention conditions." Her tone let the dark haired agent know that she did not entirely approve of everything that went on the basement of that safe house.

Rayna stared at him with those blue eyes that seemed to look into his soul and continued.

"Your analysis of the data led to discovering the middle man in a highly active arms smuggling route and Agent Sizemore credits you with breaking the Albanian as well."

His boss pushed what he recognized as his receipts from their time in Vlorë across her desk towards him.

"Clearly we need to have another discussion about what the Company considers an allowable expense. Other than that, the only bump on the entire road to Algeria seems to be your missing the target with the sniper rifle. Again, Agent Sizemore stated your performance was exceptional. He said that he was brushing an androctonus scorpion away from your arm and bumped your elbow, ruining the shot and forcing you to terminate the target hand to hand?"

Rayna let the statement hang in the air, making a question out of it.

"Yeah, good ol' Lare, always looking out for me," Michael replied, plastering a smile on his face that Ms. Kopec was coming to distrust. "Actually, the androctonus is the most deadly of the scorpions found in the region. Its venom can kill in minutes. He took quite a risk."

"Yes…" the Station Chief agreed. "Agent Sizemore has taken quite an interest in training you, Westen. I'm sure he's very committed to protecting the Company's investment in you."

The former SP stared at her former trainee for a long moment and Michael gazed back, looking calm and collected, just as she would have expected he would.

"How do you find working with your new partner?"

"I'm learning a lot of practical tradecraft that is very applicable to field conditions."

"You want to keep working with Agent Sizemore?"

"Yes."

She waited for him to continue or qualify his statement. But with no more response forthcoming, Rayna pulled an order written on CIA stationary from a file on her right.

"Agent Westen, you are no longer a trainee, you are a field agent and, as such, you have been assigned a handler. I believe you already know Dan Siebels?"

A genuine smile graced the young man's face. "Dan is my handler?"

"And I'm to let him know that you want to continue to work with Agent Sizemore?"

Michael nodded affirmatively. "Thank you."

"You've earned it. Rest up while you can. I have feeling your services are going to be much in demand. You can go, Westen."

She watched the newly minted field agent's retreating back and tried once again to reconcile her gut feeling about what was going on with her former trainee and the CIA's top wet work specialist and the obvious successes of the two missions they had been given. They seemed to work well together. Westen's poise had clearly improved. He was confident instead of cocky. He was capable of thinking out of the box and had always been intelligent. They seemed like a good pairing on the surface, Sizemore's experience seasoning the no longer green agent.

Rayna shook her head as she got up from her chair and began to pace around the room. Watching the two of them interact reminded her of the woman who had recruited her, Kay Anderson. While Sam Axe had cajoled and pleaded with her to get out of bar tending and bouncing, to stop hiding out in dive bars and do something positive with her life and finally had gotten her into the Navy, the silver haired woman had challenged her to do better still.

The senior agent had been in service of her country back when the Agency had been the OSS. Ms. Anderson had appealed to Rayna's sense of purpose and her growing patriotism. The Company needed capable women, women so capable they could show up the men with one hand tied behind their back. That dare had sparked something in Rayna Kopec.

The Station Chief sighed heavily. She had kept in touch with Kay throughout her career, less so as she had moved up the Company ladder. But Ms. Anderson had been a constant source of encourage and advice in her early going and a good friend from there on out.

She wished she could get a hold of her friend right now. It would help to get an outside perspective on the relationship between the two operatives. Having no reason that would make sense to anyone official for her misgivings, she would keep them to herself for now.

Westen had said he wanted to work with Sizemore. They appeared to work well together and there was no arguing with their effectiveness as a team. The Company was pleased with their results and, unless there was something more concrete to consider than the itch she got every time she saw them together, the pair were partners for the time being.


	7. Southern Bosnia 1992

**A/N: **_**!WARNING!**__ This is a VERY dark & intense chapter covering Larry's and Michael's time in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia. This is a very painful, but very formative chapter in life of our favorite spy and the man he ultimately became. I__f Larry could seem sane compared to what was going on there on the ground in the former Yugoslavia as Michael said in __Double Booked__, then there's a reason he told Fiona in __Enemies Closer__ that there__ was a part of him that was like Larry. _

_This is part of that reason._

()()()()()()()()()

_On 25 September 1991, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 713 imposing an arms embargo on all of what had been the former Yugoslavia. The embargo hurt the Army of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina the most because Serbia had inherited the majority of their arms from the former Yugoslavian Army and the Croatian Army could smuggle weapons in along their expansive coastline. _

_The Bosnian government lobbied to have the embargo lifted, but to no avail. Their efforts were opposed vigorously by the UK, France and Russia. The US Congress, however, heard their pleas for assistance and passed two resolutions calling for the embargo to be lifted. Both were vetoed by the President for fear of creating a rift between the US and the rest of the UN Security Council._

_Undeterred by this, the US Intelligence Community and the US Military went forward with plans to smuggle weapons across the Croatian borders to the beleaguered Bosnian forces using various back channels as well as sending C-130 transports filled with weaponry out on black flights._

_However, over time, somebody managed to work out where and when these flights were coming in and four of the last six shipments have gone missing... Missing, that is, until they turned up in the hands of Serbian militia and paramilitary groups during a battle to take the city of Jablanica._

_Having discovered the name of this enterprising arms merchant, one Mitar Savic, Langley has ordered field operatives into the area to close down the weapons thief and put an end to American weapons being placed into Serbian hands._

**()()()()()**

**Southern Bosnia, Winter 1992**

He wasn't human any more, or least he no longer felt human. He was a killer, an assassin, a cold blooded predator and right now, on the dark rumble strewn streets on the outskirts of a small Bosnian town, he was stalking his latest prey.

In the darkness, he moved on silent feet. Hunched forward, his dark clothing and balaclava covering his head made him nearly invisible. He easily kept pace with his target, not even slowing while negotiating the remains of bomb damaged buildings in the pitch black or avoiding the shattered fragments of the burnt-out vehicles in the streets which could give him away. In his hand, he gripped his Karambit, the curved blade wickedly sharp and still carrying faint remnants of the blood from its last victim. He was calm, focused and filled with blood-lust; a perfectly honed killing machine about to do what came naturally.

Finally, he saw his chance as his quarry entered a tiny house which had fared better than its neighbors after the recent bombardment that had seen the small Bosnian town fall into invading Serbian hands. Swallowing thickly, he ignored the cries coming from the woman who had unwillingly accompanied his prey along the empty streets. He knew exactly what was happening to her inside that small house; he had seen it happen every night since they had arrived in this godforsaken place.

With a feral snarl on his lips, he began his approach, his fingers flexing around the perfectly shaped handle of the knife. His muscles trembled in anticipation of the action about to take place.

Soundlessly, he opened the wooden door and slipped inside. His target was too busy assaulting the female lying beneath him to notice the figure swathed in black padding up behind him.

The woman's scared brown eyes went wide and her ear splitting scream echoed out into the night as the man invading her body was suddenly jerked upwards by his hair, his neck stretched taut to make way for the waiting weapon which flashed around, slicing open the Serbian's exposed throat almost to the point of decapitation.

Filled with euphoria from the thrill of the kill, his arms shook as he released his hold on the dead man's hair, letting the body fall to the floor with a solid thud. _One less vile monster in this world..._

Breathing deeply, he slowly let his deathly gaze fall upon the traumatized Bosnian who was now huddled in the corner of the room with her knees drawn up to her chest. Her wide terrified chocolate eyes stared back at him as she whimpered in fear.

The sound of the wooden front door being thrown open made both the occupants jump. The assault victim curled into a protective ball with her arms over her head, expecting death to come at any moment, while the stone cold killer spun, dropping into a crouch, the slightly vibrating blade which still dripped blood eager to claim another neck.

"I appreciate a good slaying as much as the next man, Kid." The newcomer was unconcerned by the figure brandishing a bloody knife. "And _you know_ how much I enjoy watching you work." He half turned, closing the door behind him. "But – _the mission_ has to come first." A hard edge was creeping into his tone as he carefully circled the marauder who had yet to stand down and relax. "And your extra-curricular activities are beginning to attract attention."

As the older man finished his little speech, he produced a handgun from under his left arm and fired a bullet into the top of the female's head, the sharp retort lost amongst the multitude of gunshots ringing out through the remains of the town. "So, as much as I like to see you indulging your bloodthirsty nature, you've got to learn _when_ to unleash it."

The man's quiet lecture and calm demeanor lulled the predator into retreating back inside the dark recesses of Michael Westen's mind where it lived, slowly gaining more control every time it was allowed out to play.

Wiping the bloody blade clean on his pant leg, Michael's icy gaze never left his mentor. "What the hell are you doing here, Lare?" he asked coldly as he rolled up the bottom of his face covering, turning the thick woolen mask into a hat in an instant.

"Trying to keep _you_ outta trouble, Kid. All this vigilante crap has to stop."

Larry's bright blue eyes bored into his, demanding both his attention and cooperation.

"Oh, don't look at me like that," the senior agent commanded. "As far as I'm concerned, you can wade in Serbian blood every night of the week if that's what you want. But _not_ when it endangers our cover. You're showing a lot of promise, Michael. Really, I'm impressed... But you're not ready to lose the training wheels. Not yet."

He clapped the younger man on the back and gave him a cheery grin to let him know there were no hard feelings. "Hey, if things go right, there'll be plenty of people to kill when we move on. While you've been indulging your _creative side,_ I've gotten a location on Mitar Savic."

Returning the killing knife to a concealed sheath inside his black leather jacket, Michael gave Larry a questioning look. They had been searching for the whereabouts of Mitar Savic, the gunrunner who was rumored to have been selling the American guns to the Serbians for two months and now it seemed they had their first solid lead on him.

"When do we move on?" the dark haired agent asked, unable to hide his eagerness to getaway from the present horror.

Then Larry squashed his protégé's hope of escape. "Soon...The whole camp is heading north to attend some big meeting. Savic is going to be there, along with some high up Serbian general."

Leaving the building, Mr. Sizemore handed the younger man a grenade, from which he had already thoughtfully pulled the pin.

"No witnesses, Kid, and no evidence." He gestured with a nod to the house they had just exited.

Without a word, the other operative tossed the grenade through the window and the two men strolled away; neither one flinched or looked back as the building was reduced to rumble and the bodies were destroyed. Instead, they walked calmly back to the main encampment of the White Dragon paramilitary group.

Back in his makeshift tent, fashioned out of a large piece of tarpaulin covered with branches for extra warmth from the fir trees which grew all over the valley sides, Michael crawled inside his sleeping bag and lay down with his head resting on the black canvas rucksack which held all his belongings.

Wiping a hand over his eyes, he tried to block out the sounds of the Serbian fighters having _fun._ He knew that somewhere out there, Larry was joining in and that, in the morning, the older man would rebuke him for his lack of commitment to the mission.

"_I know Tom Card and I know that from the first day of your training, he would have warned you about the dangers of getting emotionally involved in operations. So quit moping, Kid. I told you a deep cover mission isn't for amateurs. You have to become the person you're pretending to be and do whatever it takes to sell your cover... And I mean... whatever... it... takes..." _

He'd already suffered through several lectures about the importance of integrating into the community they were infiltrating. _But to actually go out there and do those things_...

_Eight weeks, eight long weeks ago they had flown into Sarajevo Airport, masquerading as members of a Red Cross humanitarian delegation. After clearing through the United Nations security measures, they had slipped away from the group made up of diplomats and charity workers to meet up with the CIA's man in Sarajevo, a skinny, nervous looking individual who introduced himself as Boris Jenko. _

_As Jenko had led them rapidly through the war torn city streets, he had explained that there were snipers hiding in many of the surrounding buildings who took great delight in picking off any civilians brave enough to leave their homes and the only way to beat them was to keep moving and to pray they were looking in the other direction._

_Inside the safe-house, which turned out to be a small apartment on the fifteenth floor in one of the few remaining high rise buildings left undamaged, he had handed them everything they needed to fit in with the Serbian militia, who were camped around the perimeter of the city: black heavy cotton pants, black T-shirts, paratrooper boots, coarsely woven loose fitting over-shirts, hand knitted woolen jumpers and lastly old scuffed black leather jackets with plentiful deep pockets. An hour later, after they had eaten a sparse meal of goat stew and potatoes and the streets were cloaked in darkness, they had headed out on their first deep cover mission as a team._

The screams and heart rendering wails of captured women and the frequent volleys of gunfire which were followed by the cheering of a baying mob ripped through Michael's tortured soul and sent the fingers of one hand searching for the hilt of his knife. _He wanted to kill them all..._

Reaching instead for a bottle of home brewed vodka which was popular amongst Captain Jovan Orlovi's White Dragons, the young spy took a long gulp of the harsh spirit and then tightly closed his eyes, willing himself to fall asleep.

_The militia had been badly organized and stretched thin around Sarajevo. It had been easy for the two top flight operatives to slip in amongst the ragtag groups of men scavenging around the edges of the city. They had taken their time during the early days, keeping their heads down while they perfected the local Serbian dialect into their speech. After about a week of hanging out on the fringes, they had managed to integrate themselves into one of the larger units._

_They went from helping to gather food and long boring stints on sentry duty to assisting in laying mines on the nearby roads and eventually taking point on raids deeper into the ruined city. When Lazar and his nephew, Miljan, were ordered to carry urgent orders to another group on the other side of the besieged town, they knew they had been fully accepted._

That had been six weeks ago and they were now part of another group and several hundred kilometers further to the south in the district of Foca. This new, more brutal band of brigands was led by a particularly nasty Serbian Special Forces Captain and his team of subordinates. Jovan Orlovi had been at Jablanica, the city where the missing American arms had first come to light and for the last two weeks Larry, or rather Lazar Andric, had been sucking up to the Captain in an attempt to gain his trust.

Michael turned onto his side, his fingers still seeking the comforting touch of the hilt of his knife. Before he had met Orlovi. and the many hundreds like him involved in this bloody civil war, he had thought he knew about hatred. Mr. Westen had been convinced he had already seen the worst one human could do to another. Now he understood _exactly_ how naïve he had been.

With a strong military leader, Orlovi's White Dragons were a devastating attack force with a tried and tested pattern to their assaults. At each town or village they came across, the two tanks that had been provided by the Serbian government would shell the area, destroying the buildings and killing much of the civilian population. Then, with the populace subdued, the fighters would go in to round up the survivors.

It was then that the "fun" would really start, as they systematically set about ransacking the houses and apartments before razing them to the ground. After dividing the spoils amongst themselves, they would then turn on their prisoners. Those who had survived the rounding up process were split into two groups. The men and boys would be taken off to be killed while the women and girls were kept together, where they faced the worst days of what usually turned out to be a very short life.

In the grim light of day, Michael woke to the smell of wood smoke and the grumbling moans of men waking up stiff from the cold with raging hangovers. Blinking the sleep from his eyes, the young spy stretched, trying to relieve some of the stiffness from his own limbs and gave a long sigh. He didn't want to get up and he definitely didn't want to step outside his tent and face the aftermath of the night's festivities.

"Miljan!" Larry called out in his flawless Serbian accent. "Get out here now! We're on the move."

Groaning, Michael sat up and began to gather up his belongings.

"Come on, Kid, stop wasting time. I've got us seats on one of the Elite Guard's transports." A hint of impatience in his tone had the dark haired man scrambling out into the open, blinking at the dazzling sunshine reflecting off the white of the thin layer of fresh snow.

"We're leaving right now?" he asked, trying to avoid staring at the sight of a bullet riddled corpse swinging from a nearby tree limb.

"I told you yesterday, we have the honor of traveling with Captain Orlovi himself. I spent half of last night praising your skills as a sniper, Miljan. He says he can't wait to see you in action."

Michael smiled back at his mentor, a wide toothy grin that hid the cold icy chill which filled his soul.

"_As much as I like to see you indulge your bloodthirsty nature. You've got to learn __when__ to unleash it."_

The older man's words came back to him and Agent Westen realized that this was the senior spy's way of teaching him a lesson.

"So, I'm Captain Orlovi's latest tactical advantage?"

Larry leaned in close. The younger operative could feel the other man's breath on his ear.

"_We_ do _whatever_ we have to in order to complete the mission. It's about time you learned that lesson. You're outta the kiddie pool now. You're swimming with the sharks, Kid. _Don't_ forget that."

"Whatever you say, Lazar," his apprentice replied in a flat neutral tone.

"It always is, Miljan... And _don't you_ forget _that_ either."

**()()()()()**

They left the village sitting on the hard wooden bench seats facing each other along with ten other men in Captain Orlovi's elite guard in the back of the transport truck. The large vehicle rolled slowly out of the camp, passing by the scores of men preparing to abandon the conquered town. Ahead of them, the captain and his second in command rode in a Jeep with their driver and another soldier in the back tending to the machine gun mounted in the rear.

Leaving the smoldering ruins behind them, the army travelled up the valley side on a winding road. After little more than twenty minutes, they came to a stop where the road widened out and there was a clear view of what was left of buildings below them.

Climbing out from the truck, they were ordered over to where Orlovi stood watching his army begin to form up and move out, as a convoy of military vehicles followed behind one of their two tanks on the climb out of the valley.

Dropping his binoculars so they hung down from the strap around his neck, the leader of the White Dragons turned as Lazar and Miljan Andric were escorted to his side.

"So, this is the man who has never missed a target?" Captain Jovan Orlovi looked over what promised to be his latest tactical asset and then circled around the dark haired man, who stood perfectly still, almost but not quite at attention. "Your uncle has been telling me of your skills."

Orlovi stopped in front Michael and for a couple of seconds they locked eyes. Then, remembering his role, the younger man dropped his challenging stare.

"Now, let me see the great Miljan Andric in action," Orlovi smirked and gestured towards a long wooden case laying on the back of the nearby Jeep.

Striding confidently over to the gun case, the former Ranger unclipped the lid, tossed it aside and stared down at the rifle inside.

"This is a M82A1. It is known as a SASR or a light fifty by the _American _soldiers who carry them." _Miljan_ picked up the gun and expertly checked it out to ensure it was in working order. "It is an effective weapon up to a mile and, if using API or Raufoss Mark two eleven ammunition, it can punch through buildings, trucks and even aircraft, if within range." He raised the semi automatic sniper rifle up so he could look through the telescopic sight.

"You know your weapons," the captain commented. "Now, show me you can shoot."

Loading the weapon with a 50 calibre round from the box next to case, Michael waited to be given a target. The brutal leader of the militia pointed back to the village they had just left. From where they stood now, it was just over three quarters of a mile away at the base of the valley.

"You see the barrels standing in the square?"

"Yes," the spy replied as he looked through the scope at the six oil drums stacked in a pyramid outside the town's only remaining large structure.

"Hit the barrel in the center of the bottom row."

"You understand I haven't had a chance to get a feel for this rifle and the cross wind is going to be a factor?" Michael dropped down prone on the dirt at the side of the road. Extending the bi-pod legs which would help stabilize the long barrel on the gun, he ran his tongue over his top lip as he adjusted the sights and tried to find an object which would give him a clue as to the wind speed and direction on the valley floor.

"No excuses, Miljan. If you make the shot, you get a place in my personal guard and your uncle earns my trust and friendship. Fail-_well_ let's say neither of you will have _anything_ to worry about."

Settling the rifle stock into his shoulder, Michael took his time lining up the shot. Once he was sure he had the target, the Army sharp shooter took a deep breath and, as he slowly let it out, the spy squeezed the trigger. Lowering the rifle, he grinned, confident he had made the shot. Then the loud boom followed by smaller discharges erased that smile, as the remains of the village disappeared in a cloud of white smoke and ash.

"It is my own mixture, marking this town as my kill." Orlovi smiled while the young man got back to his feet. "White phosphorous gives it the smoke and heat... Well done and welcome to my staff, Miljan," Orlovi patted the newest recruit to his personal guard on the shoulder. "Follow my orders and I promise you will become a rich man." Turning away, the captain was already in conference with his second in command on the logistics of moving his hundred strong brigade across thousands of miles through hostile territory in the middle of winter.

Placing the rifle back in its case, Michael fought down the urge to draw his SIG handgun and empty the clip into Captain Orlovi's back. _It would be so easy,_ the predator lurking in his subconscious whispered. _The captain, the second, and then the two bodyguards. If you move fast enough and -_

_And then I will be cut down by the rest of White Dragons, _he answered himself as he closed the lid and turned to find Larry watching him from the side of the road.

**()()()()()**

At the end of the first day, they had traveled just over a hundred miles and they were now deep into a Bosnian controlled area. After wolfing down a quick meal of rabbit stew, the newest recruits in Orlovi's elite guard were ordered out to patrol the furthest reaches of the camp.

Shown a spot on a narrow trail, they were told to watch for opposing scouts. An army of their size would have been hard to miss on the mountain roads and the whole camp was keyed up for an attack by Bosnian forces.

Leaning against the trunk of a tree, the young spy scowled out at the darkness Larry's lessons were always hard to take and this one had made him feel sick to the stomach. He justified his own actions in killing three men over the last three nights as righteous. After all, those animals were murderers, rapists and would have never stopped until somebody stronger and more bloodthirsty made them.

The killings had in some small way made him feel better. But he couldn't deny what he had done had endangered the mission and, in reality, had done very little to help the victims of the White Dragons brutal occupation. Two women were no longer being subjected to daily vicious assaults, but all he'd been able to do for them was give them a little food and then order them to run and hide.

"_It's all about the math. You can't save all these people, not the way you're going at it anyway. But what you can do is store up all that hate you're feeling and wait for the right moment to act. That's when you let it out, that's when you set all that darkness inside you free."_

"_And how do I know when the right moment comes, Lare?"_

"_You're not ready to make those sorta decisions, Kid. You just have to hold on 'til I tell you and, for gods sakes, loosen up a little bit, will you? Your moping is attracting attention."_

Sighing heavily, the disheartened operative changed position, moving slightly further along the narrow trail. At least standing amongst the trees, he was out of the wind and away from the camp. He didn't have to make small talk with a bunch of mass murderers.

He could feel himself slipping away. Agent Westen understood what they was doing was a necessary evil. If they were going to gather useful intelligence, they had to fit in and prove they were fiercely loyal Serbian patriots. But living the life of a cold hearted killer amongst a camp filled with so much bloody brutality was seeping into his soul and changing him in ways he wasn't entirely comfortable with.

When he had stood looking down through the rifle scope on the little town he had helped to destroy, the former Ranger had known that it was no innocent oil drum he had been ordered to fire upon. But he had also known that to refuse would have brought about his own and his partner's death and their mission would have failed. It was a judgement call and Larry had put him in a position where it was up to him to decide whose lives were more important. In the end, it hadn't even been a hard call.

"So, do you get it now?"

Michael stiffened, but managed to stop himself flinching like a frightened girl. Sometimes he wished Larry would wear a bell or something round his neck so he could hear him coming.

"Sometimes we have to do bad things for good reasons," his protégé replied sullenly.

"So, no more side trips that risk the mission?"

His apprentice nodded curtly.

"You're a talented operative, Michael. I see a bright future ahead of you. But in this line of work, that conscience of yours is gonna get us both killed. It's a luxury you can't afford out in the field. So, lock it away along with that bleeding heart mentality and get with the program already."

"I get it, Lare. So drop it, please."

"Okay then, now for some good news. We're joining up with the rest of the militia in this area. There's going to be a big meeting and the general hosting it – It's the SEAL killer, Drava."

Michael felt his heart leap in his chest. _This was a real coup._ The brutal actions taken by General Milan Drava against the civilians in Eastern Bosnia had placed him high up on all the governments watch lists. He had already evaded capture by a US Navy SEAL team and, as far as he could recall, nobody except the few SEALs who had survived the encounter knew for sure what he looked like.

_If they could bring in Drava, along with the gunrunner Savic..._

"We have to call the Chief to let her her know about Savic and Drava." The young spy's eyes were bright with excitement. Then he noticed the stony expression on the older man's features.

"The Ice Queen doesn't need to know our every move, Kid," he answered in a low tone.

"But –."

"But what? We've got nothing concrete to report. We don't have a date for the meeting, the general's name is just hearsay and we have no proof that he or Savic are going to definitely be there. She'll just tell us to get back to her when we know more."

Michael huffed. "It's procedure that we keep command apprised on our -"

"Look, Kid, every time we use that damn radio, we risk being discovered. Now, are you a field operative or are you still one of Kopec's pups who needs to run back to mommy for permission every time you need to cross the road to take a piss?"

Ice Queen, Den Mother, Bitch... Those were some of Larry's nicer terms for their boss, Station Chief Rayna Kopec. Pups were the green field operatives who the Chief liked to keep close to base.

Michael gritted his teeth and then reluctantly bowed to his superior's judgement. _Running back to Mommy... _He had been upgraded to full field operative status just over six months ago. He had even taken on a solo mission while Larry had been needed elsewhere and been successful on his own.

But, out in the wilderness of the Balkan mountains, surrounded by so much chaos, the young agent grudgingly admitted he was out of his depth. "Fine. We leave it until we know more."

"Good boy," Larry smiled happily. "Now go check out that light I spotted just off the trail down there and stop trying to think for yourself. Pay attention to what I say and you'll get a lot farther."

**()()()()()**

Larry pursed his lips and tried to contain the killing rage which flowed through him as he watched a scene of chaos unfold below him. The words of his own mentor surfaced from the dark recesses of his mind, reminding him of lessons learned long ago.

_You run a __few assets and __then you'll learn__ that keeping them in line requires __a real__ delicate touch. Sometimes you have to be __a hard ass__ and sometimes you have to __become a __best friend. It's up to you to know when it's the right time to __help 'em out __or when you need to __put the squeeze on 'em._

"Your nephew is very keen, Lazar," Captain Jovan Orlovi commented dryly as he surveyed the scene taking place on the steep slope below him.

_What the hell is he doing? _

"He's just trying to make a good impression on you, Captain." Larry Sizemore forced his tone and expression to remain neutral.

_Hadn't they just talked about this very thing? Hadn't he explained that the mission had to come first? That their lives were far more important than some miserable peasants who either didn't have the sense or the strength to look after themselves?_ _Five fucking days, that was how long his apprentice had managed to control his Boy Scout, Army Ranger, do-gooder shit._

They were standing at the edge of a road, looking down a steep precipice filled with rocky outcrops and deep gullies and watching ten of Orlovi's personal guard slip and slide as they searched the dangerous slope for two missing prisoners. Two frightened, badly beaten teenage girls who had been part of the small group of women Orlovi's militia group had brought with them from the town they had left five days earlier.

Somehow, two terrified little girls had overpowered the men using them, snapping the neck of one and stabbing the other through the heart. Larry clenched his teeth together, closing his eyes just for a second while he fought to control his rising anger.

_He had thought after the success of their first missions, which had taken them from Cuba to Algeria and all stops in between, that it would be safe enough to leave his protégé cooling his heels back at headquarters for the Balkans Region while he took care of a couple of "off the books" jobs which he didn't think the Kid was ready to know about._

On the face of it, it did look like his "nephew" was just being a little bit over enthusiastic as he trampled over the trail, destroying the evidence of where the two girls had fled and generally disrupting the search. But what _Miljan_ was really doing was leading the guards away from where the girls cowered in a shallow gully surrounded by snow covered shrubs and boulders.

"He would have made a better impression if he had stayed up here and let my men flush the runaways into the open," Orlovi growled. "He could have then impressed me further by using his rifle to put them both down."

"Youthful exuberance, Captain Orlovi. I will speak to him about it. We we're all young once, heh?"

The captain turned to face his new-found friend and advisor, his cold dark eyes glinting with anger and malice. "That exuberance needs to be tempered with with discipline, Lazar. Tonight we join up with several other units of General Drava's army as we take control of Višegrad. You can tell Miljan that he _will not_ be joining in the festivities. Instead he will be standing guard on the bridge."

"We're taking over Višegrad? Isn't that going to take some time? I thought we had an important meeting to attend?"

"Winter is here, Lazar. An army of this size will get bogged down in the snow and mud. We make camp here until the spring and then we will plan our next offensive... Now, go make sure your nephew knows of my displeasure"

"I'll remind him about following orders, you can be sure on that. It won't happen again, Captain. You can count on it."

"See it doesn't, Lazar. I like you, I like your ideas. But Miljan... he doesn't seem quite so committed to wiping out the menace infesting our country. He needs some _discipline_."

With that, Orlovi turned away, shouting for his men to call off the search. They had a rendezvous to make and they were already an hour behind schedule.

As the men traipsed back up the steep slope, Larry narrowed his eyes to stare down at one particular member of the group. Pursing his lips, he tried to work out what had gone wrong and how he was going to put it right.

Michael had been showing so much potential. The Kid had really come a long way in a very short amount of time. Placing his hands on his hips, he turned away. He needed some time alone to think things through... _It had to have been that job in Poland_.

_What he had failed to factor into his plans was that Michael, who should have been safely sitting behind a desk analysing the intelligence being dragged out of General Orborski by the new team of interrogators, would find something actionable and request a SEAL team to capture a target he suspected of being an arms dealer in Poland. But when the extraction had gone wrong because of a rookie mistake the Kid had made in analysing the data, the young spy had taken the opportunity to flex his new-found fully fledged field agent muscles and had insisted on going in with the rescue team. His protégé had shown a lot of initiative, but at least that wouldn't be happening again. He'd seen to it that the Directorate of Operations had explained things to Michael's new handler._

_Yes, Poland... That was it... Working with that bunch of gung-ho Boy Scouts had wiped out all the training he had tried to instill into his apprentice _

Larry joined Michael after the search for the missing girls was called off, pulling the younger agent off to the side, far away from the assembled army. To anybody watching, it would look like Lazar Andric was reminding his nephew about the consequences of acting rashly.

"What the hell were you thinking? You think this is some sorta game?" He shoved the younger man hard so his back hit the solid trunk of a large tree.

"They were a couple of kids, and -"

"What did I say about blowing our cover? You're damn lucky I managed to convince Orlovi you were just being over enthusiastic or this mission would be over and done with. And for what? A couple of scrawny bitches who are going to eventually get themselves killed anyway?"

Agent Sizemore took a breath and then prepared to hit the young spy with the rest of his news.

"But none of that matters now cuz you're going to have plenty of time for you to make up for your bad judgement and show me that what happened in Havana, Tunis and all over Algeria wasn't just you being lucky... Orlovi has just told me we're joining up with other militias to take Višegrad and we're gonna be stopping there until the spring."

"What? We're gonna be stuck in some town for at least another three months?" Michael paled, as his eyes scanned the surrounding area, making sure that there was no one close enough to eavesdrop on their conversation.

"What can I say, Kid? Orders are orders. But, hey, stop looking at this as a bad thing. If all the different units are in one place, we might get a better lead on Savic and at least we'll be able to sleep in a bed and get something better to eat than rabbit stew."

Larry leaned close, staring into his protégé's cobalt blue eyes, and then wrapped his hand tightly around Michael's throat, pinning him to the tree and enforcing the illusion that Uncle Lazar was disciplining Miljan as necessary. Agent Westen stiffened, but kept himself from pulling away.

"Look, Michael, you need to stay focused on the bigger picture," his mentor whispered "You _can't_ help these people. There's too damned many of them. What you need to do is remember that the Bosnian Army only has a chance of defending itself if all the ordinance America is sending stops ending up in Serbian hands. Stay focused, Kid, or you're gonna get us _both_ killed. You want that?"

Agent Sizemore pulled back and applied his open palm to the younger man's cheek, somewhere between a pat and a slap. "You're in the big leagues now. This isn't some training scenario on the Farm. This is the real world, Michael. Some people live and some people die. That's how it is out here. You've exceeded my expectations, truly. You _can't_ back off now cuz things got alittle bloody. Deep cover isn't for little girls. It takes balls and I _know_ you got _balls_, Kid. Ya just gotta use 'em."

Then the older man threw his arm over the shoulders of his junior partner. "I've been thinking about things and I know what it's like on these deep cover assignments. The boredom can get to you and you start thinking too much. Once we get into Višegrad, there'll be lots of work for us to do."

Larry stopped him a short distance from the group of marauders milling about at the top of the hill.

"You don't think a guy like Orlovi isn't gonna have a few enemies around the other camps that he'd like to see drop over dead from an unseen sniper? Don't you worry, Kid. There's gonna be plenty of chances for you to get your hands dirty _and_ keep your cover intact. Now, how does that sound?"

"Sounds great, Lare."

A small part of Michael Westen found it truly frightening that the thought of executing murderous paramilitaries had made him very happy inside and that small part was about to get a lot smaller.


	8. Višegrad, Bosnia, 1993

**A/N: **_We would like to thank you all for all the reviews, for this and all our other stories as Jedi's Pal and under our separate identities of Jedi Skysinger & Purdy's Pal. We're both sorry for the delay in posting this chapter. But, as you will find, it is a long and dark road that our hero must travel, so dark that we both agreed we needed a few days off from having Larry in our heads_.

**!Warning!**

_Another deeply disturbing, extremely intense chapter as the hunt for the Serbian arms thief moves into the town of Višegrad in Bosnia and Michael, immersed in the inhumanity of the White Dragons paramilitary group during a brutal civil war, turns a corner from which he cannot return_.

()()()()()()()()()

**Višegrad, Bosnia, Winter, Early****1993**

_For a spy, compartmentalizing is second nature. Information is given on a need-to-know basis. In your professional life, this approach keeps you safe. In your personal life, it can be dangerous__._

Tom Card had been dead wrong, but Michael hadn't been about to point that out at the time.

Compartmentalizing had been even more important in his personal life than his professional one.

He had been a master at it before he ever set foot in Langley, Virginia to begin his training. Hell, he'd been an expert at it long before he'd even showed up at Fort Benning in Georgia for basic training. Keeping things shut away in little boxes in little rooms in his head had helped him to get through all that life threw at him, to survive, to be able to function in a world that was frequently confusing and dangerous, especially as a child when he was less skilled at taking care of himself.

There were times and places to clean out the boxes, empty out some of the rooms. Those times as a child had involved bouts of vandalism or violence. As he had grown older, he had added alcohol to the mix, though never to the same degree as his father. He would never be the drunken lout that had tried to raise him. Later still, he'd added women, starting young, even by South Florida standards.

But those boxes and those rooms were overflowing right now, the horrors he had witnessed on his first long-term deep cover assignment were flooding out of their places and running red all over everything. An empty bottle of cheap home-brewed vodka lay by his foot. But it wasn't big enough to hold all the liquor it would require to get this out of his mind... out of his heart..._ out of his soul.._..

He was holding her close while she was lying limply in his lap, tightly embraced as he sat in the corner of their room. Larry had left to tend to other business with their new _best friend_ Captain Orlovi. Michael had suspected that his mentor would have wanted to listen in on _his progress_, as it was Mr. Sizemore who had insisted that his apprentice learn to blend in better. The young spy could not continue to refuse to participate in all the night-time activities of the militia, especially as they were in one place where actions, or lack thereof, would be noticed.

But the older agent did have to actually go with the Captain, so he'd had higher hopes of being able to sell his time with one of the unwilling women being held by the White Dragons, the vicious Serbian paramilitary group they were living amongst, if you could call it living. He'd been unable to bring himself to join in the rounding up, torturing and eventual shooting of the Bosnian denizens of the nearby villages; therefore, forcing himself on a female was the only choice left open to him to prove that he was _one of them_.

Michael of course had had no intention of actually doing that. However, the traumatized Bosnian who was barely more than a girl hadn't needed any encouragement to scream as he taken her to their living quarters. He let her continue to carry on, as it suited his cover, while the covert operative had tried to come up with the best way to stage the fiction that he'd done what was required of him.

Agent Westen had felt a little better about his chances of success once he knew there was no possibility of the senior spy barging in and demanding a ring side seat _at_ _the show_.

But when the assault on her body hadn't begun immediately, the young woman had tried to run, which was how they had eventually ended up in the corner of the room. The dark haired man had caught her at the door and pulled her back, whispering low that he wasn't going to hurt her, that he just wanted her to stay with him for a bit, that they would tell them a lie about what he'd done to her.

Whether she understood his true purpose or not, his intended victim had soon recognized that there was a good heart buried beneath the façade of a heartless Serbian animal and she had begun begging him to kill her quickly, to free her from the horrific hell hole she'd found herself in before she could be beaten to death, murdered while being raped as so many of her unfortunate associates had been. The young spy had been horrified, not that he'd blamed her for wanting to be freed of this nightmare, but to ask him _to do that to her_, _to take her life in cold blood with his bare hands_...

Her tears and her desperate pleas had soon turned into terrible threats, as if she'd suddenly realized that he wasn't going to help her. The black eyes had bored into his terrified blue ones. _She would expose him if he didn't do what she asked_. _She would make him do it or he would die too_. He was only trying to get her to be quiet, to render her unconscious, to get a moment to think, to stop her from getting them both killed. They struggled as she fought him, knocking them both to the ground.

Then the utter agony of an anonymous Bosnian's life quietly became his own anguish, as another huge piece of his heart was ripped from his chest and Agent Michael Westen was the one crying.

It had been almost a year since he'd held a woman. It had been far longer since he'd allowed his grief to spill out in the form of water cascading down his face, which was soaking the dirty brown hair of the still head tucked under his chin. It had been a lifetime since he'd held another person, let alone a female, and wept openly and Michael still had enough trade craft left in him to do it silently.

()()()()()

_A deep cover job changes you in a way that's hard to describe.__Spend enough time posing as a brutal paramilitary committing the occasional atrocity to fit in and the line between fiction and fact becomes blurry. Eventually, the question isn't whether your cover ID will allow you access to the target, it's whether there'll be enough of you left to recognize yourself once you complete the job._

The covert operative had already cleared the room and wrapped the body in a blanket for disposal by the time Larry had returned. Mr. Westen had hardened his heart and closed the boxes, storing them away in deep recesses of his mind to sell his chosen cover story. That is until his mentor had casually flipped open the blanket and then turned his sharp blue eyes onto his apprentice.

"What happened?" the senior spy asked, his eyes skimming over the room, taking in the rumpled state of the bed, the smalls signs of a struggle revealed in the slight repositioning of the furniture before settling on the empty bottle of vodka on the floor by the bed.

"She _really_ pissed me off," he answered with the right amount of pique, tilting his head to the side, exposing where her fingernails had scored his throat. "So..."

He shrugged his shoulders and left the statement hanging, not trusting himself to say any more. In his head, Michael could still hear her hysterical rantings, demanding he end her suffering or she would make sure he suffered too. He could still feel her broken, ragged nails clawing at him, her tiny hands reaching up, grasping at his arm as he fought to quell the terrified girl's damning words which would have exposed him.

"So, you strangled her?" Larry turned his attention back to the bruising about the young woman's neck and at the odd angle her head lay. "Broke her neck too, by the look of it... Damn, Kid, you really took care of business, didn't you?"

"_I wasn't trying to kill her. It was an accident... I just wanted her to stop yelling."_ His mind screamed for him to confess the truth. Instead, he laughed callously and gave the expected answer.

"Yeah, Lare, I just took care of it with what was _at hand._" To push home his point, he re-buttoned the waistband of his pants and buckled his belt.

"Well. I guess we should clean up this mess and then I've got somebody I want you to meet." The older man raised an eyebrow when his protégé didn't join him at the bedside. "Hey, what have I said about straightening up after yourself? C'mon, give me a hand." He flipped the blanket back over the woman's face and waited impatiently for the younger man to assist in taking the body downstairs to where the others who had not survived the night would be left until a burial party could be arranged.

"Lare..." Michael managed to contain a shudder as his fingers closed on the blanket. "I'm not doing this again... It's not what you think," He added quickly as other operative shot him a look. "Well, it is in a way. I'm still thinking about those women back in Porti Vlorë. I mean, who would want to..."

He gestured with a tilt of his chin to the body they were about to move. "Who needs to fight with _that_ when there's plenty of better out there...beautiful women who're willing. I'm not _that_ hard up."

He looked away, hoping that Larry would take the hint and not question him any closer. Whatever the senior field agent was thinking, he didn't give it voice as they lifted the corpse from the bed.

"_I just needed a chance to think, just a little more time figure out what to do. Why couldn't she have given me that?" _The lid on the box would not stay shut, his guilty conscience refusing to remain silent, making him relive the moment over and over again as he tried to come to terms with what he had done to reduce the slack form he was now holding to the empty shell it had become.

"_Dammit, I didn't do it that hard... She was too weak..., I didn't think about how weak she was." _He had closed his hand about her throat, as her high pitched yells had grown louder, but she wouldn't stop. She'd clawed at him, desperately kicked out with her bare feet. They had tumbled to the floor and then... and then she had just stopped... stopped yelling, stopped crying..._ stopped breathing._

"_She fought back so hard... I didn't think...Of course, she was desperate. Who wouldn't be with no way of escaping? The way she'd been treated, she was probably hanging on by a thread. I didn't-"_

_I can't keep doing this! _Michael knew he had to take back control or he was going to fly apart and ruin everything. Stilling the voice in his head and forcing his mind to focus wholly on the present, he began to calm down. As he was concentrating on the dead weight between them, Larry apparently hadn't noticed his internal struggle with how he'd unintentionally managed to do what his mentor had been demanding of him. Accident or not, it would solidify his cover with the Dragons, with Captain Orlovi and, most importantly, with his "Uncle Lazar." _It was what it was._

They were at the bottom of the stairs in the main lobby of the hotel which the White Dragons had taken over as their base. When a few coarse comments came his way at the evidence of his night's activity being carried outside, he even managed to smile and answer back with several lewd remarks of his own. _There would be plenty of time to swim in that sea of shame soon enough._

Leaving the body outside the building, Michael turned away, intending to scurry back to his room and lock himself away until the morning. But he was stopped by a firm hand gripping his arm.

"We need to talk," Mr. Sizemore hissed and guided the younger man across the street and away from any eavesdroppers. "That meeting Captain Orlovi dragged me along to… it was to welcome a newcomer to the town..._Aleksander Petrovic_."

It was easy to see the name meant something to Larry and it should mean something to him too; but Michael's mind was barely managing to stay above the gulf of guilt and grief he was living with.

"Jesus, Kid, are you thinking about that bitch? Forget it and _pay attention_. Aleksander Petrovic is -"

"Mitar Savic's second in command," Michael finished his mentor's sentence. "He's here. Is Savic here too?"

"He's on his way," the senior field officer confirmed. "We've got a week, maybe a little longer depending on the weather, to make a good impression on Petrovic. Then it will just be a matter of getting Savic to trust us enough to let us into his inner circle...Hey, you did what you had to do. I know how hard it was for you, but it was necessary. I'm proud of you, Kid"

But the older man's praise, while always welcome, had felt just a little hollow that time.

Larry slapped his pupil lightly on the back. "Keep up the good work and you just might make it out of this hell hole in one piece. Now, c'mon, put your game face on. I'm gonna introduce you to Alek. He's looking for a couple of marksmen to show off the new stock his boss is bringing in."

A little over an hour later, the two spies were in the town square sitting outside with the rest of the make shift army at a table next to where the major militia leaders sat in conference with the second in command to one of the premier gunrunners in the region, ever since Mitar Savic had found a way to track and ambush the black flights carrying the American arms.

The talk was loud and full of drunken men boasting about their skills, whether it was about the size of their personal armies or how many women they had raped or men they had killed.

"So, how do we get invited up to the big table, Lazar?" _Miljan_ asked his uncle as he took a long gulp from the bottle of lager in front of him.

"We're goin' to have to do something to get us noticed," the senior spy replied, his eyes glittering from the light of the nearby fire.

The younger agent's heart sunk at his superior officer's words. He could guess what Larry was thinking. The only thing these people, if you could call them that, understood was brutality and that was something he didn't think he could take any more of right now.

Even after months of living amongst the White Dragons, he still couldn't understand their fervor for wiping out a whole race of people. In some cases, neighbor had turned against neighbor with utter hatred, families who had lived in the same village for generations cruelly annihilated other members of their community without remorse.

A sudden shout went out and three men, dressed in rags and surrounded by a mob, were being herded towards the raging fire in the center of the town square. There was no doubt in the young man's mind what was about to happen to those poor unfortunate souls and his own soul twisted at the thought that there was nothing he could do to help them.

The shouts were growing louder from the baying crowd; onlookers were climbing onto their chairs and onto the tables to watch the spectacle unfold in front of them. Beside him, Larry was on his feet, smiling and joining in with the merriment. Michael too had climbed up onto his chair and then, to get a better view, he had stepped up onto the table.

Nobody was watching him as the first man was dragged forward. One of the Serbians militia men holding one of the prisoners poured a bottle of spirits over his captive's head and then, when they went to toss him onto the roaring fire, a shot rang out followed quickly by two more. All three of the mob's intended victims suddenly collapsed like puppets with their strings cut, each one with a neat hole in their forehead and the backs of their heads more or less missing.

For a second, there was silence and the paramilitaries filling the square turned their eyes to the man standing on a table with a smoking gun in his hand. Miljan Andric's eyes blazed with defiance as he returned the angry stares of the drunken crowd.

"They're cockroaches!" His voice rang out in the silence. "Filthy insects, you don't play with bugs... You step on them. You wipe them out." _He couldn't save them, but maybe he could end the suffering of the ones marked for an eventual death... It wasn't much, but it was better than standing and doing nothing __while the Bosnians were being tortured and brutalized. At least they would die quickly__._

Nobody moved, not a sound came from the crowd. But then came a roar of approval and the first of the dead _"cockroaches"_ was thrown onto the fire. The only thing he felt was deep gratitude that he wouldn't have to watch while the three men were being burned alive_. _At least_ their pain_ was over.

"Jeez, Kid, what the hell was that?" Larry hissed in the younger man's ear as soon as Michael jumped lightly back to the ground.

"You said you want us to get noticed, Uncle," _Miljan_ replied with a touch of arrogance and then, with a flicker of his eyes, he drew his partner's attention to the way Captain Orlovi and Aleksander Petrovic were looking their way while rapidly conversing.

"Lazar! Lazar Andric, come join us and bring Miljan with you," Orlovi called to his highly valued adviser and his now equally valued sharpshooter.

()()()()()

_Anybody who runs a few assets knows that some crack under the pressure. You have to be tough enough to keep them in line, supportive enough to keep them stable._

Larry watched while his protégé finally embraced his cover identity with growing pride and just a tiny bit of suspicion as the younger agent set about using every lesson he had been taught to become an essential part of Orlovi's and by proxy Petrovic's entourage. _The change in Michael's attitude had just seemed to be too good to be true_.

The night after Miljan's performance of precision shooting, Orlovi had called them both up to his private quarters on the top floor of the hotel and requested that young Mr. Andric go out alone into the city and remove the competition for a place on Petrovic's team of marksmen.

"_Your Uncle Lazar has pointed out to me that if I generously provide all the assistance Mr. Savic requires, it is the White Dragons who will benefit most and not only from all the new weapons he is bringing to the meeting in a month's time, but also from the opportunity of being introduced to General Drava... Do you know who General Drava is, Miljan?"_

Michael had nodded and went to speak; however, he was cut off when the militia commander slapped him firmly on the arm.

"_Of course you know who the general is. Every man here knows of his great success against our enemies. Now go! You know what you have to do. Prove to me you have learned to follow orders."_

It had actually been Agent Sizemore who had whispered in the captain's ear the night before, pointing out that it might be wise to remove a few of the other candidates for the prestigious position of becoming one of Savic's sharpshooters. That nagging doubt he had about his apprentice's commitment to do whatever was necessary to maintain his cover needed to be erased. What better way to do it than send the kid out there on his own to find his opponents and get rid of them in such a way that it wouldn't start a war amongst the various militia groups living in the town that is.

And now, as they waited for the arrival of their primary target, the senior covert operative was anticipating a glowing future for Mr. Westen, not only in the CIA, but also when the young man was ready to join him in the assassination business as well.

Four nights had seen five of the reputed best marksmen suffer a series of unfortunate events. A drunken fall into the freezing Drina River had ended the life of one. Early in the morning, a guard returning from a night patrol had stumbled upon two more, apparently contestants in a knife fight which had ended with both men bleeding out. Another was found sprawled on the pavement under his bedroom window, the consensus being he had tumbled out after too much night air and alcohol. The last one had really warmed Larry's heart: executed by his own commander when a piece of jewellery, which had gone missing the day before, was located under the pillow of the sharpshooter.

Michael had taken to his assignment with all the fervor he could have asked for and anyone making too much noise while tormenting their prisoners soon found themselves at the wrong end of Miljan Andric's gun barrel and on the receiving end of a lecture about wasting time instead of killing.

Now Captain Orlovi, being one of only three militia leaders who had a marksman who could possibly equal Miljan Andric, was spending most of his time hanging around with Aleksander Petrovic along with the man who was always ready with some timely advice: Miljan's Uncle Lazar.

**()()()()()**

**Washington DC, USA**

_When you work with people, you wanna know everything about them: their history, their associates, who's contacting them. Although sometimes there are details you'd rather not know._

Lt. Commander Samuel T Axe _had_ been enjoying some well-deserved leave, hanging out on South Beach in Miami, soaking up all that South Florida had to offer with his team mate and good buddy, Lance Farley. Sunshine, women in skimpy outfits, beer and a new drink Lance had introduced him to: mojitos, basically mint julips with rum... _What was there not to like or even love come to that?_

But that had been three days ago. He had been indulging in a few hours of casting off the pier, _trolling for fish and females_, when the call had come, an urgent message ordering him to report to Admiral Munroe's office at the Pentagon.

Sighing heavily, Sam shifted in the hard plastic seat he had been invited to sit on while he waited for the Admiral to see him. _Whatever the reason was for cutting his leave short, it couldn't be that damned important, _the SEAL groused internally. This was the second day he'd spent cooling his heels while watching a procession of other men and women get their half hour with the Admiral.

The previous day he had been kept waiting for eight hours before being told the Admiral was not going to be able to see him and would he please come back tomorrow. He glanced at his watch. Today he had _only_ been waiting for a mere four hours.

"Commander Axe, Admiral Munroe will see you now," the Admiral's secretary said, smiling over to him and gesturing towards the large wooden doors at the far end of the outer office.

_Finally, _Sam thought to himself. Straightening up his uniform, Lt. Commander Axe took a moment and then marched smartly across the outer office before rapping sharply on the hard oak door.

"Enter..." came the officious answer.

Stepping into the large spacious office, Sam closed the door behind him and then stood at attention before the middle aged man who was sitting behind the large mahogany desk.

Admiral Munroe was all business. "At ease, Commander, take a seat. We've got quite a lot to go through here." He flipped open the cover of a thick file. "You were on the SEAL team that attempted the extraction of Milan Drava last August?"

"Yes, Sir…" The Lt. Commander leaned forward slightly, eager to know where the Admiral was going with this line of questions.

"And you would recognize Drava now if you saw him?" his superior officer pressed.

_Drava had __personally__ killed three of his team, murdering two of them in cold blood._ "Yes, Sir, I take it you know where he is, Sir?" He remembered very clearly what had happened on that pig screw of an op. Bad intel and a rushed extraction had led to only three of an eight man team getting out alive.

"We've received a report that he's arrived in an encampment in Southwest Serbia and is expected to be there for the next few days."

Sam shifted in his chair, the light of battle in his eyes. During a failed extraction, Drava and his protection detail had come close to killing his whole team. The self-styled general's features were ingrained in his mind.

"How many teams are we sending in, Sir?"

"Just you…." Munroe held up a hand to stop the outburst he could see coming. "Now wait, there's a reason... The intel came from the CIA. They have two agents working a deep cover assignment in the camp. They're going to get you close enough to positively identify the target and assist in the extraction. Then we'll arrange to pick you up on the border with Bosnia."

_Working with a couple of spooks who've been in deep cover for God only knows how long? Great, just great_… "So, who am I working with, Sir?"

"I understand you've worked with both of them before... That's the other reason why you were chosen for this assignment...I believe you know Agents Larry Sizemore and Michael Westen."

"Great." Sam didn't bother to hide his sarcasm and then remembered where he was. "Sorry, Sir…"

Munroe coughed and looked uneasy. "You should know they have both been in country for five months. They were in Foca while the massacres were taking place and the last report had them in Višegrad for two months. You'll find all the details in the file... Also, when I spoke to the Balkan's Station Chief earlier today, she suggested they might be a bit – twitchy."

"Twitchy, Sir?" he echoed. That was his former flame and naval buddy's code for _watch-your-ass._

"You can read up on it all on your flight to Belgrade. You'll fly out early tomorrow under a diplomatic cover. Your passport, identity papers and coordinates for meeting with Sizemore and Westen are in an envelope on my secretary's desk. It should take you two or three days to reach..." He paused to look down at the file, "...Place called Bajina Bašta... Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a meeting of my own to get to." Sam jumped to his feet and saluted. "Good luck, Commander."

The Admiral obviously wasn't one for long detailed briefings. But when Sam got back to his hotel room and began studying the specifics contained in the folder, he began to realize why the meeting had been short and altogether too vague. The UN and NATO had no idea that CIA operatives were chasing down weaponry stolen off US military flights which officially never happened.

Rubbing at his brow in an effort to quell the headache caused by the thought of working with Sizemore again, the lieutenant commander took out his ID papers and started memorizing the information, sparing only a thought about just how different the Army Ranger who had saved his butt in Kuwait had been from the Michael Westen he'd worked with in Eastern Europe as a spy.

After several hours of learning his cover and acquainting himself with the region he was going to be entering, the Navy man decided it was time to take a break. Reaching for the phone, he was about to order a meal through room service when the resourceful SEAL thought of the very thing, or rather the beautiful woman, who could take his mind off his headache.

Pulling out his little black book of phone numbers, he found the one he was looking for. Captain Sara Hardman was an analyst working for Military Intelligence at the Pentagon. She was a smart, career-driven young woman whom he had met years ago and they had _an understanding_.

"Hey, Sara, baby. It's Sam, Sam Axe. I'm in DC for the night. Are free to join me for a meal?"

"Sammy," she greeted him warmly. "I thought I saw you coming out of Admiral Munroe's office this afternoon. If you're buying, I'll meet you in... Oh say, two hours if that's okay with you?"

"That'll be great. You chose where we're going and I'll pay. How's that..?"

"Where are you staying?"

"I'm at the Plaza."

"I tell you what, Sammy. Why don't we eat in the restaurant there? We can have a few drinks and then go back to your room. I've had a tough week at work and I could do with one of your extra special massages... What do you say? Do a girl a favor, sailor?"

_This is what he loved about her._ "You got it, sweetheart."

Two and a half hours later, after a shower and a change of clothes, Lt. Commander Axe was down in the hotel bar, chatting with the leggy brunette, who along with a great line of risqué conversation could also match him drink for drink. They ate in the restaurant, enjoying taking the time to catch up on the little they could tell each other about their lives before heading up to the eighth floor.

Sara wasted no time once they were in his room and Sam needed no more hint than her doffing her shirt, shoes and slacks before joining the captain on the bed. His large hands moved over her back and shoulders, easing tired muscle and turning them to jelly before helping his _buddy_ out of her under garments. She had been teased often about her surname in the service. But Ms. Hardman was certainly adept at doing just that for her partners and her old pal here was no exception to the rule.

They came together with the ease of long-time friends and lovers, each taking and giving equally. Sam Axe had always been a generous and considerate partner and Sara enjoyed the times they had together. They both knew they could each count on the other to be discreet, even when they were swapping secrets instead of kisses. Having an "in" at the Pentagon was only a part of the attraction.

Having satiated themselves most thoroughly, the brunette then asked what had brought him to DC, a conversation completely inappropriate for the restaurant below, but now good pillow talk.

And while Sam himself had serious reservations about working with one of the two agents to which he had been assigned, he hadn't expected the brown-eyed woman's reaction to his report.

"So, you've pulled a job with Larry Sizemore? Well, good luck with that." She lay back on the bed, pulling the sheet up under her arms.

"What's that supposed to mean? Hell, I know the guy's a ghoul, but..."

"Ha!" She snorted, lifting her head so she could place it against his shoulder. "A ghoul…? Jeez, you should check out who you're working with Sam. The guy is freaking notorious."

"I've worked with him before... I'd never do it again voluntarily, but hey, orders are orders. Yeah, he's a loose cannon, but..." Sara stopped his words with a sharp elbow to his ribs.

"I mean it, Sam. You _need_ to watch your back. What do you know about this Kid of his?"

"Michael Westen? I've worked with him before too. That went better than working with Sizemore." But Sam remembered his own misgivings about the younger man recently.

The intelligence analyst snorted again and reached across him to pick up a cigarette and her lighter.

"Why? What have you heard?" He couldn't hide the dread in his voice.

"Oh, don't worry about it, Sam." She suddenly turned away, placing her feet on the floor before sitting up to light her smoke. "You know spies, bunch of bitchy little girls, probably just scuttlebutt."

"Scuttlebutt, huh?" The military man knew a tactical retreat when he saw one.

Captain Hardman took a long drag and then blew a plume out away from him. "Don't you have a flight to get ready for anyway?"

"Sara?" The SEAL wasn't in the mood for evasive manoeuvres either. He pulled her back round to face him, his brown eyes boring in hers, demanding an answer. If she knew something about a man he considered a friend, then his old pal had better be prepared to spit it out.

She jerked her arm free, picking up his under shirt with her freed hand to throw it at his bare chest.

"Well, let's just say Sizemore's finally found a kindred spirit." She took another deep drag before snubbing out her smoke. "Now, get dressed if you want me to run you to the airport."

And all the way to the airport, Lt. Commander Axe couldn't get the phrase out of his head. The first time he had heard someone call the ex-Ranger 'Larry's Kid,' he had taken for just what Sara had said, just a bunch of bitchy little girls gossiping around the water cooler, no different that the scuttlebutt that made its way around a ship or a base. Mike had risen through the ranks pretty quickly working with Larry Sizemore, plenty of reason for passed over people to be pissy about it.

The little things that had happened in Poland, they were little enough that he wasn't really bothered by them. They'd both known long ago that Sam was a soldier and Mike was destined to be a spy. But the fact that his boss had passed a specific message to Admiral Monroe had the SEAL wondering exactly _how twitchy_ the young man and his infamous partner would turn out to be.

()()()()()()

**Bajina Bašta , Western Serbia**

_Under ideal circumstances, a good interrogation unfolds slowly. But circumstances are not always ideal. If you're operating on a clock, sometimes you have to get right in your enemy's face and turn up the heat._

"We're at the sharp end here, Kid. We're field agents. There's no time for polite conversation. We have to find out what's in this guy's head. Or rather you're gonna do it because I'm gonna have to get back to the party and cover for us," the senior spy spoke sharply as he half carried and half dragged their bound and gagged prisoner through the woods towards a row of dilapidated cottages built into the hillside. "I'm gonna tell them that Savic here wanted some alone time with one of the girls."

"Larry, I-" What he'd hoped when he'd made the call to his boss back in Skopje was that they would bring the captive to their headquarters in the Balkans, not do a field interrogation with no way of confirming what they were told. However, he had little choice but to follow the older agent through the darkness. When they had reached a the row of ramshackle shelters they had spotted two days earlier while on patrol, his superior field officer kicked open one of the rotted doors. Once inside, he had tossed the Serbian gunrunner down on the floor at his junior partner's feet.

"You want to get out of this hell hole, right? Well, here's what's stopping you." He gave Savic a vicious blow with his boot. "The quicker this guy gives us what we want, the quicker we get to return to civilization. It's up to you, Kid."

The young covert operative stood for a moment, unsure what to do. The only thing he was sure about was that he didn't want to stay amongst the militia any longer than he absolutely had to and if hurting this man, who by supplying weapons to the Serbians had damned himself, well then so be it.

Pulling the prisoner up to his feet, the dark haired spy pressed the older man back against the bare stone wall. Drawing his knife, Michael cut away the gag and then placed the wickedly sharp blade against the man's neck, pricking the skin.

Agent Westen leaned in close and spoke softly into the terrified man's ear.

"The American guns, how did you get them?... If you don't talk ..." He paused, leaving the threat hanging as he twisted the knife so the tip broke through the skin, sending a thin trail of blood down the front of the man's shirt. "Maybe you _should_ keep quiet… It's been a few days since I last felt hot blood run over my hand... I've missed it."

And that had only been _the start_ of Mitar Savic's final days on earth.

He used all his pent up frustration, all his anger and his hatred for the people he was being forced to live amongst to get the answers they needed. All the while Larry stood back in the shadows looking on like a proud parent, occasionally offering up suggestions or urging him on to greater violence.

"I thought you had to get back?" his apprentice queried, wiping a bloody hand down his pant leg.

"Oh, I do. But you know me. I love to see you in action... You've gotta a real talent for this work, Michael." The older agent glanced outside at the darkening sky. "But you're right. I have to go and make sure nobody misses our friend... Finish getting the answers, just don't kill him yet."

Once he was alone with his prisoner, Michael looked at what he had done. The young spy's hands shook as he propped Mitar Savic up against the wall. _Never in a million years had he ever guessed he would spend an evening using a combat knife to get the all-important answers required by his government and yet he'd done it_. He had followed his mentor's advice and used all the darkness which filled up the boxes he kept in his head to render the enterprising arms dealer a bloody mess.

Squatting down, he faced the broken man in front of him. He had already found out how the resourceful gunrunner had learned the flight routes of the CIA's black flights and, once the word was passed back to the regional office on Cyprus, the leak in the logistics department would be closed. Michael listened, pleased that Savic struggled to keep his breathing under control when his cold blue eyes stared into those of his hapless hostage. _One more thing they needed to discuss._

"So, tell me about your weapons depot in Belgrade."

An hour later, Mitar Savic was unconscious and Michael Westen was close to the breaking point himself. Once he'd gotten the answers he needed, it wasn't long before the once-enraged man's lust for Serbian blood had begun to wane. He had already discovered how the arms dealer had found out where and when the black flights were coming in and Michael now had the information on the war merchant's main weapons depot where he had stored most of his stock of stolen American arms.

_Finally_, Agent Westen told himself, _finally, the end was in sight_. They had achieved their objective. It was time to escape from the hellish pit in which they had barely survived. Sinking down onto the dirt covered floor of the crumbling ruin, the spy stared wearily at the blood ingrained into his hands... _Would it ever wash away?_

_It had been a month ago that Mitar Savic and his vastly diminished retinue of five men and only two of his three trucks had crossed over the Drina River on the Mehmed Pasa Solokovic Bridge and into town. The gunrunner had been full of righteous anger. He was a personal friend of General Drava, he was the only one who could supply such top quality weapons to the militia army working so far south and he had been robbed less than fifty miles away from what he had been informed was a Serbian stronghold by Bosnian bandits._

_He and Larry had watched closely as the militia leaders and Savic's own second in command had promised to organize a hunting party to track down the thieves and make them pay for what they'd done and then, as the VIP guest had calmed down, he had been led to the town square where a hastily prepared celebration was set up to welcome him to the town._

_By the following morning, Lazar and his nephew were firm favorites with Savic, as his second in command Petrovic had allowed the young Miljan access to one of the trucks to display the effectiveness of the guns which had been stolen off the last American black flight to touch down on a secret landing strip in Montenegro._

_Larry had been on a high that night. All these months trying to find Savic and, once they had him in their sights, the target had actually invited them to check out his ill-gotten gains while boasting about how he had come across so many American made weapons and ammunitions._

"_Just goes to show you how good our cover is. Nobody doubts we belong... Great job, Kid! I bet there's not five… hell, let's face it, there's nobody else who could have done what we've done here," his senior partner had crowed._

_Another day had passed while the militia recovered from their night of even greater indulgence than was usual. Then had come the news that the groups were banding together for one last foray into the forest before heading out for the meeting with General Drava._

"_This can work in our favor, Kid," Larry had informed him as he strapped on his gun belt over the top of his heavy winter coat. "When we head out, I want you to stay back, pretend you're sick or something, and then sneak into Savic's and Petrovic's rooms. See what you can find... If we can get find the location of the meeting, we'll be set."_

Losing his lunch to sell his story was the least objectionable thing he'd had to do in his time here.

_As soon as the hunting party numbering more than a hundred men had crossed over the bridge and back into Bosnian held territory,__ Agent Westen had stealthily made his way into his primary target's sleeping quarters. Once inside, it hadn't taken him long to discover a locked box hidden under the floorboards beneath the bed and it had taken him even less time to pick the lock. Inside he'd found a variety of papers, mostly price lists for his inventory and a few personal letters, and a neatly folded map, which when he opened it he discovered it was of Western Serbia and there was a red circle draw about a valley close to the town of Bajina Bašta._

_After returning the box to its hiding place, the young spy had debated on what was the best way to handle this new found intelligence. They'd been given ample clues as to the date of the upcoming meeting and now it looked like he might have found the location or it could be the gunrunner's weapons dump. Either way, the position marked on the map needed to be investigated._

_So with Larry out hunting in the forest and likely to remain so for some time, Michael had taken the initiative and done what he'd believed was the right thing at the time. He had gone back to his room and retrieved the comm radio from its hiding place and had relayed the news to back to the Balkans Headquarters in Skopje, Macedonia._

_When the hunting party returned two days later, a few men down but flushed with success as they escorted the stolen truck back over the bridge and into the town center, Lazar had made his excuses to Captain Orlovi and Mitar Savic and gone looking for his nephew 'to check the lad had recovered from his bad stomach.'_

"_Aw Kid, you just had to go running to the den mother, didn't you?"_

"_You said yourself we should only report when we have something important to pass on. This is important, Larry..." _He remembered how he'd swallowed and blinked slowly._ "The Chief __needs to know __we're near the end of the mission." __Michael hadn't wanted to spend one more second than he absolutely had to in Serbia and, despite Larry's lectures, there were still some protocols that needed to be followed.__"She's arranging for somebody to come out to positively identify the General."_

_He'd watched as the older spy had stood deep in thought. Finally though, Agent Sizemore had levelled his __bright__ blue eyes on his subordinate. "Don't worry about it, Kid. I'll make the next call when we reach where we're going... I just hope the Ice Queen doesn't decide to send some gung-ho SEAL team out here and undo all our work." __And a chill had spread through him at the thought._

Michael looked up as Savic whimpered; the sound was enough to have the hyper alert spy's hand reaching for his gun. Now, more than ever, the covert operative fretted about someone or something destroying all their hard work and blowing the mission. He couldn't bear the thought that everything he had done would be for nothing because of a decision being made thousands of miles away.

They hadn't used the radio again until they had arrived in the clearing below where he now waited for Larry's return. It had been the senior field agent who had made the call, reporting their new position, the same spot as on the map he had discovered in Savic's room. Then they had gotten the news that the Balkans Station Chief had managed to keep the extraction team to themselves plus one man who could positively identify General Drava as the man who had slaughtered several members of a SEAL team.

"_If __there's__ only one one man coming in, what are we supposed to do about Savic?" Michael had asked. __He had hoped when he'd made the call that they would be on their way back to Macedonia with the prisoner in hand and someone else left behind to deal with General Drava if he showed up._

_And Larry had smiled back wolfishly. "We'll interrogate him ourselves__. You __could use the practice... I'll get him away from his bodyguards. We can sell it __that__ the guy is busy with a woman... Do you remember __when__ we came back from hunting for his missing truck? He locked himself in his room with what was it?__...Four women? Until__ we we're ready to leave Višegrad."_

Getting to his feet, Michael went over to where Savic was lying on his side, curled into a fetal position. Looking down on the bloody body at his feet, the young spy trembled and wiped a hand over his eyes. _He had done what he had to for the mission. It had been necessary to get the information by whatever means __available__ to him. He just had to make sure that it hadn't all been for the nothing. The man they were dropping in here could screw up everything they had worked for... _

There were only a few people who had survived the attempt to extract General Drava seven months ago and only one of them had worked with him and Larry before. Part of him was relieved to think it would be Sam who would be joining them. He had put his life the SEAL's hands before. But…

There was another part of him that was convinced that the man he had worked with as a Ranger and a spy was never going to understand what was going on here. How could any sane person grasp what he'd been through, what he'd had to go through to complete this mission? How could the Sam Axe he remembered comprehend what was really at stake here beyond their objective of removing the chief sonuvabitch from a crowd of murderous bastards that he'd had to live amongst for...

He sucked in a deep breath and then let it out in a long sigh.

_Sometimes it was necessary to do bad things for good reasons. _


	9. Bajina Bašta, Serbia 1993

**A/N: **_Thank you for all the reviews for this dark and disturbing story about the life and times of Larry Sizemore. This next chapter is the last part of Michael's journey through the hell that was the Bosnia War. Again, because of the subject matter, there is another __**warning** __on this chapter as Sam Axe joins in for the capture of a war criminal. __On another note, __Be Brave Little Angel__, our other current story is now being updated on Sunday Nights._

**()()()()()()**

**Bajina Bašta , Western Serbia, Winter, Early 1993**

_People tend to think spies are motivated by the love of the game desire for adventure or patriotic fervor. The truth though, is that you don't choose a life as a covert operative unless something deeper is going on beneath the surface, something more personal, something harder to explain and something a lot more painful._

The joys of traveling on the back roads of a foreign country, admiring the high mountain ranges still capped with winter snow, passing by fast running streams and rivers while spotting a variety of wildlife in the distance and a couple of times up close, all of this bleak beauty was lost on Sam Axe. He was alone, in hostile territory with no back up,on if not exactly a black op, certainly a murky grey semi-sanctioned mission.

He had been given a car by the CIA contact he had met in Belgrade. However, when he neared his destination, the Lt. Commander had chosen to leave it hidden out of sight and move in on foot. The going hadn't been easy. The melting snow from the hills was making its way down to the Drina Valley far below, leaving the ground slippery or in some places turned to thick heavy mud.

On his second day, Sam had dodged two small scouting parties, which he guessed had come from the camp where Larry Sizemore and Mike Westen were doing their spy thing. Then that night he caught sight of what had been described in the mission brief as a row of derelict farm buildings, but to his eyes resembled an odd pile of old stones.

Taking his time, the SEAL circled the area to make sure he wasn't about to walk into an ambush. Only when he was satisfied did he cautiously approach the tumbled down cottages. Coming to a stop when he saw the remains of the door on the end building swing open, he listened intently. But apart from the occasional bit of gunfire in the distance, which was something he had been hearing since he had began his journey into the valley, all was quiet.

"_Hey,_" he hissed, drawing his handgun as he crept closer. "_Hey, Lazar? Miljan_?"

_What the hell was going on?_ One or both of the spies should have been waiting for him. _This was that loose cannon Sizemore. The sonuvabitch had probably killed Drava already and moved on without passing the word back_.

"Stop screwing around around out there, Boy Scout... or are you _trying_ to give our position away?" Larry's mocking tone carried softly out of the structure.

Sucking in a breath, Sam holstered his weapon and pushed open the door, stepping into the dark dank hovel. For a moment, he couldn't see any thing except for a pair of eyes glinting in the darkness at the far side of the room.

It was only been when Larry turned up the wick on an old oil lamp that he got a good look at both men. The older man was standing by what had once been a fireplace, while Michael was squatting in the far corner of the room, his back leaning against the wall. Both men were thinner than he remembered, dirtier too, and to Sam Axe's trained eye not just dirty but bloodstained.

"Hey guys, not much of welcome committee." The SEAL moved further into the room, not liking the atmosphere of barely contained violence which was coming off the two men in waves. _Twitchy, my ass, Sandy. What the hell have these two been doing?_ he thought as their cold blue eyes followed his every move.

And that's when he realized that the blood wasn't only on their clothes, but ingrained into their skin too... on the back of their hands, under their fingernails and even through their hair.

"That's because you're not welcome, Sam," Larry finally answered him. "The Kid and I have worked too damn hard for some wet rag to stumble in and screw things up for us. But you're not going to that, are you, Boy Scout? You're here to do one job and that's _all_. You do anything to blow our cover –" A knife appeared in the older man's hand, the wicked looking blade shining in the lamp light as Larry waved it menacingly. "But you're not gonna do that, are you, _Sammy_? Or do I need to speak slo-wer?"

As much as he hated Larry, Sam wasn't about to start a fight with the older man. They needed to work together if the three of them were going to extract Drava from the middle of his legion of followers.

"No, Larry, I understand you just fine," he answered the not so veiled threat. "So when are we heading out? The sooner the better as far as I'm concerned."

"Not until later... You're going to stand out like a sore thumb looking like that." The senior spy ran a critical eye over the other man's attire. "You need to blend in better," he added, kicking up a large clump of dirt up from the floor. It landed on Sam's boots and pants legs with a dull thud. "You're too clean, Cub Scout."

"What can I say, Lare? I'm not a fan of bathing in blood." He hadn't intended on getting into a name calling match with the CIA's premier wet work specialist. But there was just something about Larry that rubbed him up the wrong way.

"That's why we don't want you here. We don't need a nurse maid and knuckle dragging, trained apes have no place in intelligence gathering. You don't have the brains _or_ the balls for the work." The senior spy flashed his teeth in a shark like smile.

"Brains and balls, huh?" Sam shrugged his shoulders. "And here I was thinking the main requirement for _your_ job was the lack of a soul and no morals. But like you say, I'm not a spy."

The war of words went back and forth for several minutes until it struck Sam that the other occupant in the room hadn't spoken once since his arrival in the hovel. "Not even a hello for an old buddy, Mike?"

"Hey, Sam." The dark haired former military man turned intelligence officer slowly stood and took a couple of steps forward when Larry intervened.

"Miljan, go take a walk. Check on our friend and then we'll show this кретену the camp."

Lt. Commander Axe could only watch as the man he thought of as a friend glanced at Larry, as if he was about to say something, and then changed his mind. Sending the SEAL a half smile by way of apology, the younger spy stepped past the older men and out into the night.

"You have a friend, Lare?" Sam raised an eyebrow in mock surprise. "That's gotta be a first."

**()()()()()**

Once out of the tumbledown cottage, Michael made a quick but thorough sweep of the perimeter. The chances of one of the roving patrols that General Drava insisted upon as part of his security measures were unlikely to come out as far up the valley side as their position. However, as Larry was fond of saying, when you think everything is going your way, that's the time to be extra careful.

As he stepped lightly over the stony tracks looking for any sign that they were under surveillance, the covert operative could barely contain his nervousness. If all went well, by daylight they would be away from Orlovi and the White Dragons and all the other blood thirsty paramilitary units filling the bottom of the valley _for good._

The young agent couldn't help the smug smile which formed on his lips. He had not only survived his first deep cover assignment, in a place many men would have gone mad or been discovered and killed. Plus, according to his friend and mentor, they had succeed in closing down one of the major suppliers of arms to the Serbian side in the brutal conflict and revealed a corrupt logistic analyst working for the US Air Force in Cyprus. _That is, of course, if their cover remained intact during these last few hours_, a small voice in his head interrupted his reverie and counseled caution.

_If Sam Axe did as he was told and didn't destroy all their hard work..._the voice of Larry Sizemore added, causing Agent Westen's smile to fade as his lips narrowed into a hard line, his jaw clenching.

Thinking about his friend caused Michael to pause and look down the valley side while he dealt with his conflicted emotions to Sam's arrival in Western Serbia. When Larry had finally relayed the name of the man coming to identify Drava, he had been happy and confident that Langley had made the right choice. He had worked with Sam several times as a Ranger and as recently as nine months ago as a spy. Their mission in Poland, although it had gotten off to a rocky start, had ended well.

But Poland wasn't Serbia and, as Mr. Sizemore had correctly pointed out, Lt. Commander Axe was military. As such, he was very good at following orders. Sam might have been able to improvise with the proper supervision, he didn't have the skill set to do their job or the guts to do _whatever_ _it took _to succeed in such a dangerous environment, as his mentor had repeatedly reminded him before the man's arrival.

The troubled spy shook his head and started moving again. He had one more thing to do before going back to the cottage. _Maybe Larry was right..._ Because Agent Westen knew without a doubt that Sam Axe wouldn't agree with what they had planned to cover their escape from hell.

**()()()()()**

Once he had deemed him sufficiently soiled to pass inspection, and the Kid had returned from his task, Larry announced it was time for them to go. The senior field officer stayed close to Sam's side at all times during the half an hour it took to walk into the camp while Michael roved ahead making sure they avoided patrols and any hunting parties. It hadn't gone unnoticed by the SEAL that Agent Sizemore was doing his best to keep his partner away from what the Navy man could only think of as an _outside influence_. Each time he had tried to talk to the younger man, Larry had inserted himself into the conversation and taken over.

But Sam didn't need to talk with his one-time Ranger buddy to see the changes in Mr. Westen were astounding and not in a good way. Some of the ex-Army man's attitude could be explained by having to maintain a false identity for so long in such a dangerous environment, knowing a single slip could bring about his own death and end their mission.

As a member of Special Forces, Sam knew what being under constant stress could do to a man, especially in a combat situation and one that had lasted so this long. But there was more to it than that and it was really getting on the the Lt. Commander's nerves the way the younger spy looked to his partner before saying or doing anything. _As much as he didn't want to believe it, it certainly seemed like the rumors about Michael Westen becoming _"_Larry's Kid" were true..._

"Hey, Saint Sam..." Agent Sizemore's fingers gripped his arm, stopping him from following Michael to the edge of the tree line and into the camp. "There's about twenty different groups down in that camp, that's nearly a thousand men." Larry tightened his grasp on the younger man's arm. "You keep your head down and follow our lead, no matter what you see. You got it?"

"Can we get on with this?" The SEAL pulled his arm free of the older man's grip and followed the other man into the open. _Jeez, typical spook move, making big production number about something as simple as walking through an enemy stronghold. He'd been on active service since his early twenties..._

Seconds later, Sam's senses were reeling at the stench coming from a pile of corpses left to rot at the edge of clearing. Further into the camp, the trio passed by a drunken crowd cheering and jeering as the body of a man, who the naval officer sincerely hoped was already dead, was being dragged behind a motorbike and then there were the sobs and cries of the women...

Fighting the urge not to throw up as his faculties were assailed from all directions by the horrors of life amongst the most brutal militia groups operating in Southern Bosnian and along the Western border with Serbia, the SEAL began to wonder how the two men at his side had managed to cope with what they'd had to live with every day without going insane... _or maybe they had already gone over the edge after all...It wouldn't have been too long a trip for Larry and his buddy Mike hadn't seemed all that far behind..._

"Lazar!" The threesome came to a stop as two men came striding in their direction.

Sam felt his friend's hand land lightly on his arm as a warning to hang back and let Larry deal with the two advancing men.

"They're asking about a friend of theirs. They can't find him." Michael spoke out of the side of his mouth, translating the conversation for Sam's benefit. "He's telling them the guy is on the other side of the camp with a couple of women an hour ago."

Once Agent Sizemore had sent two of Mitar Savic's henchmen off in the opposite direction from where their boss really lay bound and gagged until he was needed, the older operative signalled for them to continue on their way.

"Drava's tent is in the center of the camp. He's got at least twenty men on guard at all times. But at this time of night, he'll be sitting out in the open, presiding over the entertainment," Michael continued to talk while barely moving his lips

A heart wrenching wail broke through the cacophony of noise already filling the air, followed by the cruel laughter of four young men dragging a terrified woman towards the edge of the camp. Still with the taste of bile on his tongue, the SEAL was barely aware of his hand closing around the handle of his gun until the younger spy leaned in, stopping him raising the weapon.

"Don't react. You can't help them. Not without blowing our cover," the dark haired man hissed out the warning.

"Miljan!" Larry called out sharply and Michael instantly went to his partner's side, leaving the Lt. Commander to trail behind.

It struck Sam then how much of a team the two men had become, from their movements, expressions and, from what he'd just witnessed, even their personalities were now similar. It was very unsettling to watch Michael Westen, whom he'd liked and respected, morphing into a junior version of a man he despised: Larry Sizemore, a heartless bastard who obviously thrived on chaos.

"Okay, we're here. See that camp fire? That's where we'll find Drava. We'll circle around until you can get a good look at him... If he is the SEAL killer, you get to stay out of the way while me and the Kid handle everything."

"And how the hell are you gonna do that?" Sam sneered, as he stared at the large crowd eating drinking and committing a whole wagon load of war crimes.

"Leave it to us," Larry's Kid replied a little too eagerly for the naval man's liking.

"C'mon," Larry urged him to move, leaving Michael behind. "Ten minutes after you give me the nod that it's the guy we're lookin' for, the Kid is going to set off a diversion and we're going to leave with the sonuvabitch."

"What about your mission? I thought you weren't supposed to do anything to-" _Oh, this was the Larry he truly hated, the one always changing things up at the last minute without any warning._

Larry laughed and slapped Sam on the back hard enough to make the Lt. Commander stumble. But then when he spoke, it was in a low sibilant whisper. "Two birds with one stone, Boy Scout. Let's just say our target is gonna to help us out with Drava."

They moved through the crowd at the speed of a glacier until, after nearly two hours, they found a spot where they had a good view of a long table and the group of leaders sitting along one side. In the place of honor was a tall, broad-shouldered man with slick backed black hair and a bushy moustache, who was dressed in a dark colored uniform emblazoned with medals and decorations

"That him?" Agent Sizemore asked as he raised a bottle of vodka up to his lips.

"Yeah." Sam clenched his jaw shut, not trusting himself to speak another word.

"Good... I think we've given the Kid enough time." He raised the bottle high in the air and called out for everyone to hear. "Лонг живот опште Drava!"

"_DRAVA! DRAVA! DRAVA!_" The crowd cheered loudly and the general got to his feet to an even more adulation.

Now that he had the crowd stirred up, Larry nudged his companion's arm. "Come on, we need to get into position," he spoke lowly and began to move swiftly around the perimeter of the crowd until he found a spot close to the guest of honor. "Get ready... Oh an' don't wet yourself when the fun starts, Sammy."

Moments later, a loud and terrifying scream filled the air, sounding over all the other cries of misery and silencing the rowdy celebrations taking place. Hands reached for weapons as a bloody figure surrounded by even more of Drava's militia staggered forward, half running, half stumbling before collapsing whimpering into the arms of two of the General's personal bodyguards.

Mitar Savic was barely recognizable and, as he babbled incoherently about spies and devils, the gunrunner suddenly disappeared following deafening boom and a massive blast wave that disintegrated everyone nearby. But that was only _the beginning_ of the chaos which descended upon Drava's camp. While everybody was still recovering from the shock of the first attack, more explosions ripped through the gathering.

"Wait!" Larry hissed. "That's the Kid out there. We've spent the last couple of days planting charges. We've got it all planned out. This whole place is gonna burn."

An ear shattering _BOOM _was followed by two more that made the ground under their feet shake.

"That would be our little arms merchant's trucks. Nice of him to give Lazar and Miljan Andric full access to his weapons before we left Vizegrad, wasn't it?" the older man crowed. That'll teach the bastard to steal from Uncle Sam, eh Cub Scout?

Drava's remaining body guards had closed in on their leader and were ushering the General back towards his tent. An unseen rifle began to crack and then the general's guards were dropping like flies.

Which was just what Larry had been waiting for, "C'mon, nurse maid, time to get your hands dirty."

Without waiting to see if the navy man followed him, Larry stepped forward with his pistol at the ready. Shooting three of the remaining body guards down before they realized they were under attack, he was aiming at a fourth when Drava's men began to return fire.

Trying to keep up with an escape plan, which neither Larry nor Michael had bothered to share the details, Sam joined in the fight until he managed to catch Drava with a stunning blow to the head. Then, with the older agent's assistance, the SEAL began to drag their prize out of the camp and towards the Drina River while Michael, hidden from view, covered their retreat with his sniper rifle.

()()()()()()

The young spy slipped down from his sniper perch and stealthily sneaked past what was left of Drava's decimated army. Nobody was chasing after the general. The few men left who had any authority were more concerned with gaining back control of what remained of their troops.

The explosives he and Larry had secreted throughout the encampment had worked to deadly effect. As soon as he had hit the remote trigger switch, the now deceased gun runner's trucks had been blown to pieces, destroying all the shiny new toys Savic had planned to sell to that bunch of homicidal maniacs inhabiting the region. But the stolen American guns weren't his only target. The spy's incendiary devices also took out Drava's own weapons supply and many of the shelters housing the various paramilitary groups. At least those that either Lazar or Miljan Andric could get close enough to without drawing suspicion that is.

Now, as confusion reigned and the various self-styled captains argued as to who was going to take charge, Michael slipped away, following the route taken by his friends. Reaching the rendezvous spot, the covert operative was surprised to find his military buddy was alone with the prisoner. Instantly, he was on full alert as concern for his mentor had him scanning the surrounding area.

"Where's Larry? Did something happen?" He was positive he'd successfully covered their retreat. _Had someone slipped by him or had something else happened?_

"Relax, Mikey, your pal is off making some super-secret phone call which I don't have the clearance to listen in on," Sam replied, indicating they should move further away from the prisoner who was now tethered to a tree trunk.

The SEAL stood with his hands on his hips and chewed on his bottom lip as he took a minute to think about what he wanted to say. _It wasn't his job to give advice, but he thought of the younger man as a friend._ Sucking in a deep breath, he decided he couldn't keep quiet.

"So, uh, Mike... some mission you and Larry been on here... how you, uh, holding up, brother?"

The dark haired spy looked startled for a second and then the mask settled back into place and Sam knew he'd made a mistake; however, that didn't mean he wasn't going to push a little more.

"I guess what I'm asking is, are you okay about how we got the prisoner out?"

_Did he think it was the right thing to do? Killing Savic like that and the other people who got caught in the blasts he set off, the older man wondered._

"We did what we had to do, Sam. How else were the three of us going to past an army like that?" Michael stared hard, trying to portray the same self-confidence his mentor always showed, but failing under the SEAL's knowing gaze.

"Sometimes we have to do things, things we'd rather not have to do, but it's all part of the job, Sam. What we did," he paused. Deep down, where he'd stored the memories of the things he had done and seen, some of the boxes started to rattle. _He couldn't have that, not yet, not now..._"What we did was necessary," Michael declared. "We're spies. Sometimes you have to do bad things for good reasons. You didn't always like the orders you were cut sometimes, Sam, but you followed them."

"That's true, Mike. Sometimes the brass doesn't know what they're doing, but they're the brass, you know. You're right. You do the best you can. But, think about it, Mikey, sometimes your partner can steer you wrong, too. Do yourself a favor, talk to your handler," he advised. "You should try working with some other people; get a broader picture more than just what Larry says. There are other senior field agents who you could learn from."

"The job's almost finished. We did what we had to do to complete the mission," came the stubborn reply and the spy's eyes narrowed as he stared up at the dark sky. "I just want it to be _over_," he said so softly that the older man almost didn't hear him_. The ex-Ranger looked absolutely exhausted_.

Then, looking his brother-in-arms in the eyes, Michael added, "You need to get your prisoner ready for transport. There's a bird coming in low and this LZ gonna get hot if you keep hanging around."

"Just think about it, Mike," his buddy urged.

"Just let it alone, Sam," the younger man answered wearily.

As the Seahawk came in closer, the spy fell back standing on guard with his rifle at the ready while the Lt. Commander Axe collected his prisoner for delivery to the newly formed International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

**()()()()()**

**Belgrade, Serbia**

_After the adrenaline rush of an operation comes a crash. Heightened reflexes and awareness don't last. Two boring hours of driving later, even the sharpest killing machine lets down his guard._

Larry was in an almost jubilant mood. The call to their headquarters in Macedonia had yielded nothing but good news. The discovery and capture of one of the armed forces most wanted had been declared a massive win by both the military and intelligence agencies and then the geeks sitting behind their desks in regional HQ had managed to confirm the location of Mitar Savic's arms depot...

And that just left one more thing for him and the Kid to do before they could head back to Skopje and enjoy the fruits of their success. It had been a long six months out in the field, but the results were more than worth having to live in the wild wearing the same rough, dirty clothes constantly.

Right now though, they were traveling on foot as fast as they could. Crossing open country towards the coordinates given to them by that trained seal, they were headed to where Sam had hidden the car he'd been given to make the journey from Belgrade out to the wilderness of western Serbia.

"_Our assets on location do not have the skills necessary to process an armaments warehouse of that size. However, since we no longer have your resource available for further questioning, I want every scrape of intel you can bring back from his office before you neutralize the location."_

Agent Sizemore pushed the voice of the Ice Queen, his boss Station Chief Rayna Kopec out of his mind as he followed his younger partner up a steep incline. He was sure from the description Sam Axe gave them that when they reached the top of the hill, they would be able to see the mountain road and the small stand of trees where the SEAL had camouflaged the Zastava Koral, a little two door compact and one of the most common makes of vehicle in the country.

"Keep going, Kid," Larry called out. "Once we have that car, we're on our way to finish this off for good. A four hour ride, set off a few more explosions and then I'm gonna make sure we get what we're owed... a damn good vacation. I'm gonna sleep for a week right after I take a shower and burn these clothes. I tell ya it's about time those drones on easy street appreciated everything we do for them. I'd liked to see one of them get out in the field and get their hands dirty."

Reaching the vehicle, the senior spy kept watch for any of the remnants of Drava army who might be looking for revenge while his apprentice cleared away the branches Sam had used to disguise the car and got it back onto the road.

"I'll drive," the older agent ordered the younger man out of the driver's seat. "I want you to run an inventory on our weapons and wire up any RDX we've got left..." He watched as his protégé's face pulled down into a scowl as he headed for the other side of the car.

"Aw, c'mon, turn that frown upside down, pal. In about four hours, you get to blow up the rest of Savic's stolen arms and another four hours after that, we'll be sitting on a Blackhawk on our way back to civ-vil-liz-zation! You've done great, Kid. But you've gotta remember, in our business, follow through is crucial. You don't score if you spike the ball before you're in the end zone."

His mentor kept an eye on Michael throughout the whole journey from the wilds of Western Serbia to its capital. He knew all too well about post operation fatigue and he wasn't about to let the younger man fall asleep at the wheel until the job was completed. After making his apprentice report on the status of their weapons and ammunition, the older agent had him talk through how he was going to wire the warehouse to blow and then go through everything a second time to be sure

All the worries he'd had earlier about his partner had been laid to rest. After Michael had blatantly ignored his orders and freed the two young women during their march to Višegrad, Larry had seriously been thinking about adding a little something to his junior partner's food. But then the young man had surprised him by his sudden change in attitude. He had finally seen the depth of the darkness that Michael Westen kept locked away and he saw the promise of a great future for them.

All the way to their destination, he kept up a steady stream of compliments. It wasn't only to keep his pupil keyed up and running on the rage necessary to finish the final part of this assignment. No, Larry Sizemore was genuinely pleased with his protégé's performance. His worries that Sam Axe would have a detrimental influence on _Saint Michael_ had been unfounded, much to his liking.

They reached the city as the sky began to lighten in the pre-dawn. Leaving the small car at the side of the road, the two men made their way along empty back streets until they reached the warehouse district next to the Danube River. Standing in the shadows, the spies studied the front of the three storey structure, one of many which lined the river front.

"So, you ready to finish this, Kid?" Larry asked as he screwed a silencer onto his handgun. "We've got to go in quiet."

Michael nodded and followed older agent's example.

"No mistakes now. This is it. We burn this place to the ground and it's all over. You ready for this?"

"Yeah…let's do this."

Michael was eager to complete the final act of this mission. _He was so close to being away from this place he despised_. He had his cold blue eyes fixed on the two figures standing by the door to the warehouse, his gun already in his hand. When he thought about the people who these monsters had armed and the things they did... _These people didn't deserve an ounce of mercy. They had been lining their pockets at the expense of the Bosnian peasants_. _They had innocent blood on their hands._

Because of _them_, now _he_ had innocent blood on his hands...

The dark haired operative blinked away the images filling his mind. He needed his focus on the job. Because regardless what Larry said, he knew releasing all his hate now would not help him when he had to plant explosives. He had to keep his mind on achieving their objective.

"Let's go have some fun." Larry flashed a toothy smile just before he stepped into the open with Michael hot on his heels.

They moved as one, their heavy boots echoing on the cobblestone street while their dark clothing making them hard to see in the dim dawn light. The younger man raised his gun, but two soft Phffts and the guards falling lifeless to the ground told him Agent Sizemore wasn't in the mood for sharing.

"Get the locks while I dispose of these two." The senior spy pushed his gun into his waistband and began to drag the first body over to the river bank.

In the minute it took for Michael to disarm the alarm and pick the locks barring their entrance, the older man had tipped both of his victims into the icy cold waters of the Danube. Now they stood at the door, his apprentice's hand wrapped around the handle.

"Ready?" The younger man hissed and when his partner nodded, Michael swung the door open and they both stepped through. Another guard appeared at door way on the right hand side. But before Larry could bring his gun to bear, his protégé had stepped forward and calmly shot the man in the chest. Moving as if he were an automaton, the covert operative then stepped over the body blocking the entrance to the office and shot the man desperately trying to make a telephone call in the head.

They paused, checking out the TV screens which showed the images from the cameras that covered the rest of the warehouse. They appeared to be alone. Larry started pulling together all the paperwork he could see on the office desk and in files standing on shelves and lining the walls.

"Way to go, Kid!" he enthused. "Now get this place rigged to blow and we can be on our way."

Michael didn't wait to reply, just picked up the bag holding the explosives and left the office for the supplies rooms in the back.

Watching his apprentice as he left to complete his task, Larry continued to do his part. There was no way they could take everything, so he skimmed the pages trying to decide what was going to be valuable to the analysts on the second floor of the regional headquarters back home.

In some ways, it was going to be a shame that they were moving on. Serbia had certainly accelerated the training program he'd planned for the kid. But Michael had passed all the tests he had set: interrogating Savic, holding back Drava's men while they snatched the general and just now. Killing those two guards was like icing on the cake. He had seen Michael's expression; he'd seen the look in his eyes. _It could have been too much too soon, but he had managed to survive and thrive._

The senior agent turned his eyes to the screen, which showed an image of his apprentice placing the charges and running det cord around the supports. _Yes, his Kid had done well_.

_The guy I'm after, he's a real heavy hitter. He's not gonna let me get close enough to pop him and he's too smart to take a drink off a stranger. So I'm gonna let him see me and you're gonna be waiting right here in this alley. I'm gonna get him to come to you... This is it, kid, you're not gonna let me down now, are you? Use the silencer, otherwise the cops 'll be on you before you can spit._

Larry shook his head, remembering the first time his mentor had trusted him with a contract kill. He had been fifteen years old. He wondered briefly if the man he had always thought of as the Shadow had ever had the same worries about his commitment to the job. Or ever had the same feeling of satisfaction when he knew he'd made the right choice?

Then he watched as Michael walked over to the metal staircase in the corner of the room and started to go up the steps. _What the hell was the Kid up to?_

In the store room with the explosive charges set to take out the supporting walls and the thermite he'd found in a locked cabinet placed in small jars amongst the boxes of guns and ammunition Michael had suddenly thought about what, or rather who, was on the upper floors. It was one thing blowing up the people and equipment which had caused so much pain and misery, it was completely another to incinerate a building which might be hiding innocents.

He had to check out the other floors.

"Hey, Kid!" Larry rushed into the store room, staring up at the stairs trying to see where the younger man had gone. "What the hell are you doing? Get the down here now. You think we have time for you to go exploring? We have to get going and I mean now."

"Just checking on something, Lare. I -" Michael started to explain as he descended the staircase.

"Nobody here, pal, you think they woulda stayed out of sight once we came inside? You really think anyone who's here isn't connected to this operation. There are no innocent bystanders. "

He waited until the younger spy was at his side, "So, this place ready to burn?"

"Yea, I've wired charges to the supports. As soon as they blow, the building will begin to come down and I found alittle something extra to make sure it all burns to the ground."

Larry had no time for explosives, but he did admire craftsmanship. He listened as his apprentice explained all that he'd done and studied the positioning of the charges, so if he ever had to he would be able to pull off something similar.

"Okay then." He beamed. "Let's get outta here and get this place lit up."

Finding a car to steal wasn't difficult at seven o clock in the morning, even though the streets were getting busier as the populace began to wake and get ready for another working day. There were plenty of out of the way parking spaces and transportation to choose from.

The pair was already across the river when a loud boom filled the air, followed by sharps cracking sounds as if a gun battle was taking place and a large plume of dark smoke rose up like a cloud.

"Mission complete, pal..." The senior spy smiled broadly as he watched the blazing inferno light up the early morning sky. "We are at the top of our game. There's gonna be no stopping us after this."

Michael nodded as the relief to be leaving Serbia and the last six months behind was evident on his face. His mentor slapped his no longer junior partner on the shoulder as they drove out of Belgrade, minutes before the police and army began to set up roadblocks to stop people leaving the city.

**()()()()()**

**Skopje, Macedonia, Early Spring 1993**

_To become another man for months, it's impossible to go through and not be affected at the most basic level. Every hour, every day, whether you're in public or alone, you have to live the life of the man you're claiming to be. It creeps into your soul after awhile__._

Rayna Kopec had seen the look before. She'd seen it her entire life, long before she was with the Company or the Navy. The dirty blonde had seen it in the bars where she'd worked in her youth, under-age and working under a false flag to prevent anyone from knowing who she really was, and she'd seen it plenty of times on the mean streets of her home town, growing up in the Big Apple.

_The look of somebody who'd seen too much, who'd been through too much, who didn't have a clue in the world how to process it. _The Balkans Station Chief had been concerned when her two top agents had drawn the assignment to track down who had been diverting the American guns from the Bosnians and sneaking them to the Serbians. Michael Westen had been a victim of his own success.

After their mission to capture Orborski, who was still providing valuable intel, after taking down a major arms smuggling route through several countries, after eliminating a turncoat Algerian agent and then managing to not only rescue a couple of stranded Navy SEALs in Poland, but take out a Stasi agent as well, to anyone else's mind, Agent Westen was surely well prepared to go off on his first deep cover assignment in the wicked wildness that Bosnia-Herzegovina had morphed into.

But Station Chief Kopec knew better. She'd read the official reports. Her former trainee had become as skilled as his mentor in the delicate art of being economical with the truth and still reporting _"Just the facts, ma'am." _However, watching the debriefings and talking with Westen, _she knew._

_She just didn't know what to do about it any more than the young man had apparently._

Rayna had talked to him about taking some leave. A six-month assignment of that intensity had certainly earned them some down time; however, the dark haired spy had insisted on getting back in the field. The intel they'd gathered before they'd blown Mitar Savic's weapons depot to kingdom come pointed to a sophisticated network centered around Kiev and operating throughout the region.

Following their lengthy debriefings, Agent Westen's harassment of the analysts who were in his opinion _"sitting on their asses in a comfy house and not working hard enough"_ had been a problem. The arrogance and rudeness he'd shown to the support staff had even drawn a few eyebrows from Mr. Sizemore, who was already renowned for his sarcasm. In the ensuing weeks since the pair had returned from Serbia, they had gone from being the _'Dynamic Duo'_ to the _'Terror Twins'_ as far as those people working and passing through in the three-storey house in Skopje were concerned.

It bothered the blonde to threaten the younger man. She knew all about post-mission paranoia and how hard it was to let things go sometimes. Rayna had tried to be understanding; however, the station chief had other agents and analysts under her command to consider as well. Putting him on report if he didn't straighten up was what was left to her to try and encourage him curb his temper.

The two had worked well together during their first missions in Afghanistan. The former Ranger had become a good agent and, despite the fact that Sizemore made her skin crawl, Ms. Kopec couldn't deny that his pupil had blossomed under his tutelage. She just hated to see someone with a soul being groomed to become the CIA's next master assassin and apparently it was bothering Westen as well, as evidenced by his behavior since returning from such an exacting assignment.

But the dark haired operative would hear none of it when she suggested a transfer to another region or even partnering with someone other than the senior field officer who'd taken the younger spy under his wing. Rayna could see Tom Card's fingerprints all over Michael Westen when she'd first worked with him, but that had changed now and she wasn't sure if it was entirely for the better.

She was standing in Stanwyck's office, looking at the monitors, trying to figure out what was taking the two so long to show up upstairs when she spotted her former trainee chatting up one of the few female staffers on the second floor. _Hopefully, he was apologizing for his boorish behavior._

"There you are, my dear," Larry announced his presence as he stopped in the doorway. "Looking in on the kiddies, are we? Have the good little boy and girls made any progress on our next job in Kiev?"

The station chief turned her gaze on the senior spy, while still keeping a watch on the monitor out of the corner of her eye. Her assistant had inserted himself in the conversation between Westen and the woman, a turn of events that didn't bode well for any of them.

"We're working with our assets in the Ukraine on your cover ID's. It's going to take some time given how fluid the situation on the ground is. In the meantime, I'd like to discuss your-"

She never got the opportunity to finish her sentence. A high pitched shriek cut through the sound system and she turned back to see Alan Stanwyck pinned up against the wall, his feet dangling, while Larry's Kid as some people had started to call him held the younger man up aloft with one hand and pressed a blade against his throat with the other.

"I need a couple of one off ID's, the Company credit card and a jet fueled up and waiting at the airport, honey," Mr. Sizemore declared. "You give me that and a couple of weeks _without_ hearing from you and _I_ will take care of _that_. Send 'em to that dump we're in; we're clearing outta there."

The older agent didn't wait for her answer, but rather headed swiftly down the staircase, trying to appear casual. Rayna watched as he encouraged his apprentice to quit bothering the little people and let them get back to work because _they_ had something more important to do right then.

Station Chief Kopec didn't quite hold her breath as Agent Stanwyck's feet found the floor and she could her the wheezing all the way upstairs without benefit of the audio equipment. The CIA's premier wet work specialist didn't waste any time or concern for his protégé's latest target. Somehow he managed to maneuver both of them out of the office without seeming to rush at all. However, in a matter of moments, Larry and Michael were headed out the door presumably to pack.

Rayna sat down heavily in her assistant's chair and began to write out their travel orders.

**()()()()()**

_Turning an asset is a multi-step process. You back them into a corner, you pile on stress, you create tension with the people they trust and if you can cut them off from good influences, so you're the only voice in their ear, they're much more likely to listen. It's a formula that works so well -it even works on spies who oughta know better._

Michael Westen hadn't had so much good food, excessive drink and incredible sex since his heady days of running wild on A1A during Spring Breaks back in the early 80's. A short, slender woman, who'd lost four inches doffing her heels and then all of her clothing as they'd come back to his hotel room, was sitting astride his naked form feeding him caviar while he took long pulls from a bottle of very expensive vodka to wash it all down. She reminded him of his lawyer lady friend from Miami and part of his brain wondered if he could actually spend three days without dressing again.

He hadn't asked what was going on when Larry had hustled him out of the CIA's regional HQ in that little house in Skopje. He hadn't actually cared at the time. Later, after the crimson had cleared from his vision, he'd been hard pressed to say what had made him so angry with Agent Stanley... Stanwyck, whatever... and Mr. Sizemore hadn't seemed to really care either. The older agent never asked, never censured him, never even commented on it again. He'd simply said, _"Pack up, Kid."_

Agent Westen hadn't been sorry to put the dingy flat behind him, gathering up all his belongings which were few and loading them into a canvas carry-all and a suit bag for his newest threads. He had assumed they were relocating to Kiev to begin work on the next phrase of their mission to curtail the arms flowing from what'd been the bread basket of the USSR into the besieged Balkans.

The dark haired man hadn't even really been tipped off by the luxury hotel they had checked into. He and Larry had traveled under the guise of international arms dealers before in Albania. When they had stepped onto a floating spa, _Sauna Na Abordazh_, a cozy Finnish sauna on the ship, he had presumed that there would be other people joining them on their party boat, targets to be recruited.

"_This is the life, eh, Kid?"_ His mentor had crowed as they sat at the high set of benches in the steam room, the heat, the booze and the food all mingling together to leave him light-headed. _"About time the bitch let us have a little R&R after six months in that hell hole. You deserve it, Michael."_

"_A venik in the banya is more valuable than money,"_ his partner had announced as the older man indicated they should slid down to the lower benches while two women wearing next to nothing and carrying woolen caps and bundles of birch branches entered the sauna. "_Or so says an old Russian proverb. Personally, I'll take the dough. This is the fun part, Kid. Just relax and go with it,_" he had instructed, seeing the puzzled look on his protégé's face as the caps had been pushed onto their sweat soaked heads and the women had begun whipping them lightly with the wooden switches.

By the time he had been stripped of his towel, dunked in a cold bath and deposited on a massage table, Mr. Westen had begun to work out that there was no one else boarding the boat and this really was _all for them_. The dark haired young spy had fallen asleep, as the one scantily-clad blonde had worked on his back, arms, neck and scalp and the other had worked over his thighs, calves and feet.

Michael had been awoken by the pair, who were now bare, turning him over on the padded table and then massaging the other side of him. That is until the lady who had been laboring on his legs had climbed up and scooted between his limbs, her fingers doing the walking over his muscles from ankle to ass, before performing the most spectacular act of fellatio he'd received in recent memory.

Then the days had become a haze of vodka, vixens and praise, as his partner, _his mentor,_ _his friend_ had reviewed his achievements, complimented his commitment to the mission, extolled the virtues and rewards of a job well done and reminded the young covert operative that it had been Larry who'd had his back out in Bosnia, who had seen to it that Agent Michael Westen was now receiving the reward that he had so richly deserved for a job so supremely well done. Sure, he'd had to go over the Station Chief's head to get them the luxury hotel accommodations, the girls from the best escort agencies in the Ukraine, the fine food and best booze available in Kiev, _but they deserved it_.

_There were benefits to being with a professional,_ Michael decided as the brunette in his bed stopped feeding him and began kissing her way down his slimmer but recovering frame, which better living conditions had helped him regain. Being with a high priced call girl meant he didn't have to talk, didn't have to explain, barely even had to tell them what he wanted, other than he expected his sex partner to be on top, _so the legions of the dead would stay locked away and he could enjoy himself._

And still for all that, for all the distractions, for the alcohol, the amorous encounters, effusive encouragement of his senior field officer, the rewards his efforts had reaped, sometimes still when the woman who'd pleasured him was sleeping by his side, Michael couldn't stop the tiny tears that trickled from the corners of his world weary eyes before he swiped them away with shaking fingers.


	10. Kiev Ukraine 1993

**A/N**_: As Michael said in __Past and Future Tense__, the winter of 1993 was very good for him. In this installment of __Life with Larry__, we learn what really happened to that rogue spetsnaz team, the missing warhead, why he misses the sound of Russian screams and the name Michael Westen is a code word for a special operations team in Russian intelligence circles… _

_Our continued gratitude for everyone's enthusiasm for our efforts, regardless of how much we all hate what Larry did to Michael, it molded him into the man he became for better and for worse._

**()()()()()()()()()**

_"When the CIA recruited you, your test scores were good. Your field work, strong enough. But then, when you were operating in Eastern Europe, you elevated your game. You went from a slightly above average operative to a living legend. The CIA would have never given its highest priority operations to the Michael Westen they recruited. You evolved into something that they never expected. Something inside of you—it shifted."_

_"Look at my time in Kiev. You run that many high risk operations in seven months, you grow stronger or you die." _

**Kiev, Ukraine 1993**

The Ukraine, like its capital Kiev, was a place in transition in the early nineties. The joy of gaining its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 had quickly been replaced by the pain of transitioning from a planned into a market economy with the majority of the population being plunged into poverty. By the end of 1993, the Ukraine had just finished setting a world record for hyperinflation in a single year. For the average Ukrainian, survival meant working more than one job, growing their own vegetables and obtaining their basic needs through a barter economy.

There were others however who preferred to thrive rather than survive albeit by means less savory and more dangerous. Kiev was a place of lawlessness that more resembled the American Western frontier of the past century than a founding member of the former Soviet Bloc. The past year had been one of transition for both the country and the two American spies on a mission, who had been moving purposefully through the streets of its capital for these last seven months in pursuit of various gun runners, seeking to take over their routes and trade.

Just as they had in Albania, the two operatives posing as war merchants had lived the high life when not selling arms or seeing to it that rival dealers ended up dead, often conveniently at one another's hands. As the men who had allegedly found a way to take over the late Mitar Savic's business obtaining high quality ordinance unbeknownst to the US government, Alexei Makarkin and his son Oleg quickly carved a bloody swath while making a place for themselves in the illicit arms trade that flourished in the aftermath of the overall economic collapse of Eastern Europe.

So, the younger man found it somewhat ironic that their return to the Balkans had rather quickly resulted in them having to go back to the Ukrainian city from which they had recently departed in pursuit of their target. The Russian, who himself had left Bosnia-Herzegovina after personally overseeing a ridiculous large delivery to the Republika Srpska besieging the capital there, was headed back to Kiev to take possession of what was rumored to be a stolen nuclear warhead.

The agents in question had crossed jurisdictional boundaries with the same illicit ease as that of the pair of criminals who had slipped across international borders. Following the weapons dealer and his lieutenant on their trip from Sarajevo to the club district in Kiev had only been the prelude to the real pursuit. His partner had notified the nearest Russian station chief, one of the three officers overseeing the joint operation, that they would let him know once they'd found his missing nuke, leaving Gregor Yegenov to sort out the details with his opposite numbers.

They stood sipping vodka in one of those faux diamond-encrusted super clubs as one writer described it, where Ultra Natasha femme fatales and brazen bandits lorded it over the plebs with an abandon not seen in peacetime Europe since the 1920s while they waited for the duo in question to depart. Michael had been chatting up one of the many heavily made-up women milling about the club when she suggested they make use of one of the private rooms in the back. Never one to desert his post, the dark haired spy was trying to find a suitable reason to put her off when their target's second came off the dance floor and headed in that direction.

A knowing leer on his mentor's lips and a nod of his head later, Michael found himself trying his best to keep his attention on the lady lying under him _and_ the voices from the next room. When one half of their quarry asked the woman with him if she would like to come back to his place for more liquor and entertainment, the American spy finished his encounter and cleaned up quickly.

It was an easy matter for a pair of operatives with their skills and expertise to follow the arms merchant and his girlfriend out of the club, even with the man's lieutenant and another woman in tow, trailing the quartet on their short walk back to their local flat.

The Company men stood at the end of the hall, watching the entrance through which they had all just passed, listening as numerous locks clacked into place on a steel door unlike any of its neighbors on the floor. _Good thing he'd brought enough shape charge to blow it open. Kicking it in was not going to be an option_.

Unfortunately for the occupants, they had just started the after club drinking session in the front room when the door exploded in on them. They had no time to retrieve their weapons.

_The predators had just become the prey_.

As the older man kept his weapons trained on their four captives, Michael swept the smaller and then the larger of the back rooms, collecting the firearms and searching for any useful intel.

He heard Larry questioning them in Russian as to where the exchange for the warhead was to take place and then he heard the report, the subsequent scream and the inevitable sound of a body hitting the floor. _That had started a little sooner than he had expected. _

"Rooms clear," he advised, to which Mr. Sizemore responded by herding the remaining three prisoners past the corpse of the female they had picked up in the club, presently lying face down in a growing pool of her own blood. The American operatives weren't worried about anyone calling the militsyia; minding one's own business was a Russian invention after all.

The trio was soon sitting on the end of bed, bound and furious. _That was about to change_.

Larry repeated his question and the lieutenant spat at him. Suddenly, the gun runner and his now hysterical girlfriend had a body between them, a neat bullet hole in his second's forehead and fragments of the man's skull and grey matter splattered all over the mattress behind them.

"Tell him what he wants to know," Michael advised, his Russian taking on a Ukrainian accent, "before you die as well."

The bottle blonde agreed, pleading with her boyfriend with trembling lips and watery eyes, as the thick mascara trailed over her cheeks in muddy rivlets.

A couple of shattered knee caps and a blown scapula later, as his partner pressed his firearm to the sobbing woman's forehead, her boyfriend Vasily Andropov told the older spy what he wanted to know in exchange for their lives.

The pair of operatives left the apartment with a couple of briefcases full of hard currencies that used to belong to arms merchant, the time and location of the meet and even the name of the man who had engineered the theft of the warhead….as well as four bodies in their wake

And Agent Westen's clip was still full.

**()()()()()()()()()**

"Are you sulking?" he queried as they wound their way through the narrow streets towards their new locale, mistaking Michael's silence for something else. "You'll get your chance soon enough to have some fun. Hell, play your cards right and I might let you take down the whole spetsnaz team by yourself. After all, the training wheels came off back in Serbia, pal."

_Something wasn't right here besides the cavalier way his mentor had just killed four people._

"You aren't going soft on me now, are ya, Kid?" The question cut through his reverie. "Because if you think a dead scumbag arms dealer and that trio of parasites are more important than taking a loose warhead out of the hands of a bunch of rogue Red Berets, then I _should_ let the bitch have your head examined."

Station Chief Kopec had been keeping a close eye on him since they'd returned from their deep cover mission in Serbia. Michael knew his recent behavior had gotten him on her radar. She'd tried to get him to take some leave and get out of the field for a while. She'd tried to talk to him about taking on different assignments. He knew she'd had more than a few conversations with Dan Siebels. Finally, she warned him that the next step was a profile review and inactive status pending the outcome if he didn't get his act back together. That was _before _he'd tried to throttle her idiot of a personal assistant when Stanwyck had made the mistake of interrupting him.

"It's not that," his protégé protested as they slipped into the basement apartment they were using as a safe house in Kiev. They had recently abandoned their five star hotel in the city when their hunt for the gun runner supplying the Serbians with weapons had sent them back to the Balkans. He flipped on the light switch, illuminating the sparse room with its bare concrete walls and worn furnishings. "He gave it up too easy. We're missing something."

"Easy?" Mr. Sizemore chuckled. "I guess that's one way of looking it." He stripped off his large overcoat, revealing his gore spattered clothing underneath.

Looking down at his shirt and pants, the older man sighed and headed toward the area that served as the bathroom. It was nothing more than a sink, a toilet and an open shower partitioned off by a curtain. "I tell ya, Kid, when we get back to Skopje, we are going to _have to_ go to the tailor. I'm down to my last good suit. This is one is ruined," he declared, removing the ensemble covered in various bits of flesh and blood.

Mr. Westen threw his large overcoat on the other bed and started to move the furniture that hid the slick containing their communications equipment.

"Whoa, whoa, what do you think you're doing?" Larry demanded as he toweled off his now clean hands. "You're not seriously thinking of calling for back-up?"

"No, of course not, but we need to notify them that-"

"Use your head, Michael. What do you think will happen when you do that? Come on, man."

He stepped in front of the younger man, pushing the heavy wooden chest of drawers back into place before straightening to look his apprentice in the eyes.

"This is _our_ mission. _We_ got the Intel, _we_ found dealer and _we_ are going to take that warhead back. You make that call and a bunch of limp dicks from headquarters are gonna show up to screw it up! You remember what almost happened in Serbia? You want that warhead to get into the wrong hands? We're the senior field agents _here_. We're the ones _they_ sent to do the job, so let's _do the job_!"

Larry wrapped his arm around his apprentice's shoulders. "Michael, we are more than ready to handle this. Nobody could have done what we did. _We_ brought in General Drava, the SEAL killer. Hell, you blew up that Belgrade weapons depot all by yourself and, hey, what about that Algerian special ops guy? You were still a rookie when you took that guy out. Who walked away wearing his shades, huh? You need to listen to old Lare and stop doubting. You and me, Kid, we're unstoppable. _Nobody _stands up to us and _nobody_ gets in our way.

The younger man nodded as his partner dropped his arm. "How do you want to play this?"

"I'll go in and do the deal. Tell 'em that Vasily got permanently detained and Alexei is here to take care of business. We can double whatever he was going to pay for it since our dead dealer was kind enough to leave us all his cash. You back me up in case they try to pull something."

With a curt nod of his head, Agent Westen began to load a canvas bag with their ordinance.

"Once I've got the warhead, then you can call the bitch to come mop up the rest." Mr. Sizemore shrugged. "I guess she has her uses. Kopec may have gotten all the credit in Termez, but we both know you really saved that op, right, Kid?"

"Yeah," he agreed, though he remembered it differently. He wasn't about to start arguing with the senior spy about it at that particular moment. _Larry was right_. They were the ones putting their asses on the line and they were the ones in the field who got their hands dirty and got the job done. _The brass didn't really care about the how as long as they got what they wanted and it was all kept quiet_. No arguing with success and they were _very_ successful.

While he had worked well with Rayna before and had known her longer than his mentor had, Michael couldn't argue with what the more seasoned agent had said about her; the Station Chief had been the one threatening to get him pulled out of the field. _Maybe this operation was just the thing to show everyone who had their head screwed on straight and who didn't_.

Mr. Westen put on his bulky coat back on over the black turtleneck and dark field pants, which were now laden with weapons and other items of tradecraft, while the other man finished changing into the fine designer threads for which Alexei Makarkin was now famous.

"Let's do this," the dark haired spy declared.

Mr. Sizemore's smile was broad. "Whatever you say, Kid."

**()()()()()()()()()**

It wasn't until they had parked their small car near the dank and looming structure of an abandoned chemical plant that Michael began to have doubts again about what they were doing. The look on the dealer's face when he gave Larry the time and the location of the meet had been defiant, not defeated. _This felt too much like a set-up_.

As he scouted the front of the crumbling building, the place looked almost peaceful covered in a layer of snow, but the prints leading into the entrance told him this would be anything but a quiet night. It was a team of six, four of whom were carrying something heavy. He trotted back to the rear of the car.

"Only six?" Larry enthused as he shed his heavy overcoat and straightened up his suit. The fit wasn't exactly perfect, but it was adequate for the task at hand. He pulled a Czech-made VZ61 Skorpion machine pistol from the trunk. "Hardly seems fair."

"We need to scout this out," Michael declared, checking once again the readiness of the various weapons he had on his person, concealed or otherwise. "I don't think he told us everything."

"You do that, Kid. I'm going to go greet our host." The older man pulled a metal briefcase out of the trunk as well and closed it; the click echoed quietly in the chill air. "I'm sure all this cash will put Comrade Zamanov at ease with our little change of plans," he smiled.

The younger man's hand grabbed his arm just above the elbow. "I think we need to—"

"Need to what, Kid? Do _I need_ to remind you there's a loose warhead in that building? We don't have time to play it safe. You know, after the last seven months, I thought you were onboard with the program. What the hell is wrong with you? You _cannot_ be going soft on me now, Kid."

Mr. Westen's jaw locked and his blue eyes flashed with anger.

"I'm just saying there may be more to this than—" he started to respond through clenched teeth.

"There's no time for this. Whatever is in there, we are more than ready to handle it." His mentor's cold eyes bore into his, all trace of amusement gone. "Some people live and some people die and sometimes someone gets to decide that outcome. Do you want to be the decider or the decidee?" Larry's expression hardened further. "Don't tell me you just decided you wanna to call the den mother for back-up or something? Jesus, Kid, do you want to call your mommy, too?"

Michael's face became a mask of icy fury; that look was the last thing many a terrorist had seen in Afghanistan.

"No," he answered flatly. "I'm going to take position on the second floor. Make sure you don't get too close to any of them. If there are more of them than we think, I might end up hitting you too when they bring out the warhead and the shooting starts. If they don't kill you first, that is." He barred his teeth in a predatory grin that was more of a grimace.

Mr. Sizemore's face became jovial again. "Now _that's_ the Michael I know," he said, clapping him on the back. "We'll make a _mokroye delo_ out of you yet."

The younger operative disappeared into the staircase as Larry strode confidently into the main entrance of the facility, the briefcase full of stolen money one hand and the VZ61 in the other.

_Call his mother_, Madeline's son seethed as he wound his way up the stairs through to the bank of second story offices that overlooked the factory floor; typical Soviet set-up, the overlords lording it over the worker bees. _Larry needs to give that shit a rest, it's getting seriously old_.

He could see his partner's back as he faced the leader of the rogue team. Dmitri Zamanov was a tall hulk of man with jet black hair and a full case of five o'clock shadow who dwarfed _Alexei._

All of the former operatives in the room were of similar muscle tone and coloring but of various heights. It was plain by their demeanor as well as their clothing that they were no longer actively in the service of their country, though they were all still partially dressed in the classic VDV uniforms, which meant they were probably a former GRU unit. He'd encountered such units in Afghanistan. They were the best trained and the most deadly of all the spetsnaz teams.

The two of the other five stood off to the right, armed with RPK-74s, hovering protectively over the crate that presumably carried the warhead. The remaining pair, carrying AK74s as well as side arms, walked a tight slow semi-circle behind the unexpected arms dealer who had dared to show up uninvited. _That means the someone who's missing is patrolling the perimeter no doubt_.

Michael heard the GRU former commander question the change in plans as he took the briefcase from the senior agent and then set it on a small table to the left of him. The tall man proceeded to rummage through its contents. Larry was arguing that it didn't matter whether Alexei Makarkin or Vasily Andropov bought the warhead, the money would spend the same regardless of who gave it to him, especially since he was willing to pay twice as much as Andropov had agreed to. A cruel smile curved over the Russian's lips and he nodded sharply.

The two men closed on Agent Sizemore in an instant from behind. The spy did manage to shoot one of them in the foot before the leader of the group was upon him, wrenching the Skorpion from his grasp. _Dammit, he knew something was up_. _He hadn't had any time to warn his partner_.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" the older man demanded. "I'm offering you double—"

"Clearly you are not my comrade Vasily and my deal was with him. Since you are not my friend, then there is no need to deliver the goods. I will just take your money as you did his, Alexei, or should I say, тайный агент Sizemore, spy for the US government?"

_Uh-oh._

As the other two held him fast, Dmitri delivered a staggering blow to Larry's mid-section with the weapon he'd just taken from him.

"Where is your partner?" the ex-Colonel demanded as the unmasked operative collapsed onto his knees in front of him. "Where is Westen?"

The spy vanished from the upper floor. _He needed to separate them quickly or his mentor was going to be dead and the warhead would be heading out the front door_. Michael searched quickly as he scrambled back towards the entrance for something he utilize to secure the heavy metal in place and was rewarded with discovering some actual chains he could use to prevent the main doors from opening and keep their quarry from leaving that way. Then it was a matter of leaving a small charge behind in case he needed it opened again quickly and another as a decoy.

Agent Westen scouted around for an area where he could intercept the two who would soon be sent to look for him and would be arriving shortly no doubt. The former Ranger needed to control their ability to maneuver. He soon found a suitable hallway and a suitable hostage.

The team member who had been on perimeter patrol suddenly found himself in one iron vise of a headlock, his gun gone and his arm broken and useless, a shout of pain tearing from the man's lips as he lost his weapon and the use of his limb simultaneously.

"I need you to do better than that," Michael told him, inches from the man's ear.

The one-time soldier of the motherland grunted a classic русский epitaph about his opponent's parentage as he tried vainly to free himself to no avail.

"Fine," the American operative announced, pulling a cruel looking curved blade from his pants pocket. The cold metal glinted in the dull light. "I can _help you_ scream."

And so the Russian did, long and loud.

"Thank you," Mr. Westen said, releasing the wounded man, who dropped to the floor with a satisfying crash. "You just might get to live if you don't bleed out before they find you."

_Some people live and some people die. _

The other two sentries did exactly as they were trained to do and played right into Michael's hands. The one on his left saw him step out of the darkness. The last thing that Russian rogue ever saw was a blur of motion before a throwing knife buried itself in his chest. He shot wildly as he died, distracting his comrade and allowing the Agency man to finish off the sentry to his right with two well-placed shots. Michael collected both of their assault rifles and slung them across his back_.__ Three down, three to go._

The American spy stepped over the body of the man he'd just shot, careful not to get the spreading blood on his boots, and moved slowly towards the entrance to the factory floor. He heard the sounds of metal impacting flesh and knew that his partner was taking a pounding.

"So, Boris, how is it you got ahold of our names?" he heard Larry's voice query in Russian. "Heard something around the water cooler at work when you decided to do a little free lancing?"

"I am asking the questions, Agent Sizemore,"the commissar of the rogues had reminded him. The next crack sounded like it had impacted bone that time.

"Tell you what," _Larry's voice sounded shakier than before_, "Why don't you take this up with my boss. You're just her type. I don't think the Ice Queen's gotten any since-"

Agent Westen was sure that blow had landed on his associate's nose from the sound of it.

"Pavel, please make our guest more uncomfortable."

A step and then a scrape sounded in a pattern until the thump of flesh against flesh was heard and the grunt that followed indicated another sucker punch. Evidently the man Larry had shot in the foot earlier was having his revenge.

Michael needed to lure the other two guards out of there. The injured one would not come willingly. He considered the distance and the angle from the second floor. With the proper rifle, the shot would be a breeze. Without one... well, he had done things with an AK-74 that most people were incapable of.

The dark haired spy positioned himself just out of sight behind the short wall which surrounded the second floor walkway. They were working over Mr. Sizemore with a great deal of enthusiasm when he set off the small amount of explosive he'd left in the entryway.

Zamanov ordered the uninjured man to investigate. That man didn't get ten paces before being almost cut in two by a barrage of automatic weapons fire. When the other rogue member of the spetsnaz team tried to duck for cover, his wound slowed him down as anticipated and he was an easy target for the next burst of fire.

"I will kill your partner if you do not surrender yourself!"the former commander declared, clearly unnerved by this turn of events. He grabbed his hostage by the collar and dragged him back towards the container that held his only other remaining bit of leverage.

Michael slipped quietly down the stairs and began circling the perimeter of the factory floor, keeping out of sight. _This would be over in a matter of minutes_. He had no doubt in his mind.

Larry was on his knees in front of the crate that held the warhead. His left eye was already in the process of swelling shut. Blood dripped from his nose and leaked from the corner of his mouth and from a cut on his forehead above his right eye. The rest of him appeared to be in no better shape from the torn and disheveled condition of his clothing. It was an impressive amount damage done given the short amount of time they'd had to inflict it.

"Come out, Westen!" Dmitri screeched and then pressed the automatic firmly into the back of his captive's skull. "I will kill him if you do not show yourself. Can you hear me?" he shouted at the room at large. "Your partner is a dead man if you don't-"

Stepping out of the shadows as he drew a Stechkin APS, the ace operative put one slug through the man's heart and the other between his eyes before the man could finish his threat.

"I decide who lives or dies," he told the crumbling corpse dispassionately.

As the large Russian slumped to the ground next to him, Larry broke out with a delighted laugh.

"Beautiful, Kid, that was just beautiful. It was worth it taking a beating just to see that."

Michael helped his mentor to his feet. As Mr. Sizemore swayed and started to fall again, he steadied him and then helped settle the battered man onto a nearby chair. The cold rage still coursed through his veins, unassuaged by the fact that all his opponents were now dead.

"Lost your temper for a minute there, eh, Kid?" The older man chuckled. "Feels good to let go, doesn't it? Nothing really makes you feel quite as alive as when you're killing someone." Larry smiled and grasped his apprentice by the forearm. "Oh, this is beautiful, just beautiful. I love watching you work, man. That felt great, didn't it? What did I tell you, eh, Michael?"

Frighteningly enough, _Larry was right_. The adrenaline surging through him in a heady rush felt better than great. Agent Westen struggled for a moment to get his breathing back under control.

Sounds at the entryway brought his attention back to business. Someone was trying to get through the doors he had locked. As a muffled explosion sounded, Michael barricaded the senior officer and the crate behind a large piece of defunct equipment, training his weapon on the doorway. He fired a short burst at the entrance and the concrete floor in front of the approaching boots when a voice called out.

"Fall back! FALL BACK NOW!"

It took the younger spy a minute to process that the voice was familiar and not a threat.

"Oh, Kid," Larry sighed, looking up from his place on the dirty concrete floor, his back pressed against the dusty machinery. "You called them, didn't you?"

The disappointment was evident in his voice and his visage, marred as it was.

"No, I didn't," Michael returned flatly, staring straight down into his mentor's face. "I have no idea how they knew we were here."

It sounded as though he resented their intrusion.

Mr. Sizemore locked his one good eye onto his turbulent blue ones and studied him for a moment. "No, you didn't." A grin split his bloodied and bruised face. "I'm proud of ya, Kid."

**()()()()()()()()()**

"Let me get this straight. He fired on the tac team?"

"Yes, ma'am," Webb confirmed. The man before her desk stood ramrod straight at attention, still wearing his field uniform. The tactical support team in question had exited the Ukraine straightaway, whisking the warhead and the two agents who had recovered it out of the country, and had headed directly for the nearest and most secure US installation available.

He wasn't surprised that she'd gotten to Germany before them; however, that had left him with the unenviable task of being the bearer of this bad news. But if Agent Clayton Webb had expected a bigger reaction from the Station Chief of Balkan Operations to this turn of events, he was sorely disappointed.

Nonetheless, despite her calm outer demeanor, her cobalt blue eyes sparked with a barely contained anger which unsettled him. It reminded him a little too much of the look in Westen's eyes once he'd finally gotten the man to stop shooting at them.

"Your report indicates that Westen and Sizemore single handedly took down a six-man team?" The dirty blonde woman was reviewing the grainy photos of the kills as she posed the question.

"We found five bodies and one fatally injured man. Preliminary identification of the evidence in the field indicates they were the members of the rogue Security Ministry spetsnaz team that the FSK was hunting. There might have been more, but we had to vacate with the warhead before the FSK arrived."

_They had been damned lucky to intercept that Security Ministry communication and get their own tactical support team there before the FSK could arrive to clean house._ She shuddered to think what would have happened next if they hadn't. Station Chief Kopec flipped through the field notes and then the medical reports. "According to this, Sizemore took enough of beating that he had to be assisted out."

"Yes, ma'am," Webb repeated.

Rayna allowed herself a moment of unprofessionalism to wish she'd been there to see that and then sat back in her chair, resisting the urge to pace with all that was in her. Since there was barely enough room in the field office the Air Force had given her for the desk and the chairs, she'd have to find another way to relieve the tension.

Agent Webb was something of a whiner, so she had expected more of a complaint from him about the reception of the tactical team had received. Obviously her displeasure with the entire affair must really be showing through however subtly.

"What is the current disposition of the warhead?"

"The weapon was transported directly from the air field to Research for analysis as per your orders. It was never armed and has been permanently disabled. "

"Thank you, Agent Webb. Please go and see to it personally that the hardware does not leave Research unless I tell you otherwise _directly_. Do we understand each other?"

"Yes, we do, ma'am."

"Please tell Agent Westen I will see him in fifteen minutes on your way out," she requested tersely.

As he closed the door behind him, Webb decided that he would rather be playing messenger and standing guard duty over a defunct warhead than be in the other operative's shoes at the moment.

Station Chief Kopec was between trainees at the moment and therefore short-handed. She hadn't picked a replacement for Agent Stanwyk yet, although Steven Benson had looked like a promising candidate. At the moment she had bigger worries than replacing a green agent. Rayna was still alternating between sad and mad that Alan Stanwyk had managed to get himself killed with something as ridiculously preventable as food poisoning. He'd been warned.

The weary woman leaned her head forward and pinched the bridge of her nose, wisps of loose hair falling into her face. Everything had been thrown together on the fly; her travel arrangements, the tactical support operation, her field office here at Ramstein AFB, her 'hadn't been worn in a couple of years' fatigues, even the hasty braid she'd thrown in her hair. Even it was ostensibly not up to the task.

And, at just that particular moment, neither was she.

_Damn those two_, Rayna thought bitterly. Being pulled out of bed in the middle of the night to get on a plane was part of the job. But finding out that your operatives who were supposed to be in their region under your jurisdiction were off elsewhere buying a warhead from a rogue Russian black ops team behind your back was enough to give a person a migraine at the very least.

Not to mention the blowback she was getting right now from her bosses as the Russians were demanding the return of their warhead and the heads of the two agents who'd tried to buy it. Seemingly, the spetsnaz team wasn't the only thing that had gone rogue on this op.

Those two were supposed to be finding the arms dealer to whom the renegade Russians were planning on selling the weapon, but Vasily Andropov had vanished. Fortunately, she'd had people monitoring the Security Ministry for any chatter about the warhead or the rogue team that had stolen it. Somehow, her agents had arranged to go on the buy themselves on behalf of the US government without notifying anyone officially and had subsequently taken down six highly trained operatives along the way. _At least one of them had, anyway_.

There was a brief rap on the door, followed quickly by the entrance of the young man in question. She narrowed her eyes at him and motioned for him to sit without getting up herself.

"Westen, why did I have to hear about what you and Sizemore were doing from _intercepted Russian Intel communiqués?_"

Michael shifted uncomfortably in the chair for a moment. It was obvious he was still keyed up from his one man armed assault campaign.

"Until there was something definitive to call in, there was no need. When we did have something that needed reporting, there was no time to call it in," he responded curtly.

His posture was an extremely odd mix of defiance and defensiveness.

"Yeah, about that, what were you thinking firing on the tactical support team?"

"I was determining if they were friendlies. They could have just as easily been _their_ back up."

"All of which you would have known had you bothered to contact me to let me know what you two were doing."

Agent Westen crossed his arms tightly over his chest and sat up even straighter in the chair.

"Once we had the location of the buy, it was only a matter of hours before the warhead would have been gone. We had actionable intel that required an immediate response."

Her brows arched over her cool blue eyes. "I see. So you two thought using as your arms dealer covers to buy the warhead yourselves was the best way to handle that problem?"

"It was the most expedient way to complete the mission objective. We were the senior agents in the field. We were the ones in place the handle the _problem_," his voice took on a sarcastic lilt at the end.

"Oh, you definitely took care of the problem," she agreed as she gestured towards the field reports. "Impressive work, Westen; that was apparently a GRU unit you took out."

"I know," Michael agreed and his tone was smug.

She noted that he wasn't crediting Sizemore with any of the kills, not that she had expected it.

His partner's condition pretty much indicated that Larry had distracted the spetsnaz team by taking a pounding while his protégé had taken them out. Clearly it had been an effective strategy, but somehow she doubted that had been the plan when they'd arrived.

"And what if you hadn't been so successful? You and your partner would be dead, the warhead would be on its way to another buyer and no one would have known what had happened."

"That wouldn't have happened," he contradicted, although she could see that particular outcome had at least occurred to him. Rayna knew what, or more likely who, had caused Westen to be thinking that way. He was too smart an agent to have come up with that scenario on his own.

"So what was your plan, Westen? Were you going to walk out of the building with the warhead under one arm and Sizemore under the other? Do you have any idea what kind of blowback we're getting from the Russians on this one? They're claiming that _we_ were trying to buy the warhead for _ourselves_."

The younger man shook his head dismissively. "That's not my concern."

"Well, you've made it _my _concern," Rayna countered sharply.

"It was my job was to see to it that the warhead didn't get into the wrong hands. _I did my job_. They should be thanking us for solving their personnel problem for them," he groused as the frown on his face deepened.

"_Your job __was_ to locate Vasily Andropov. _Your job would have been_ to find out the location of the buy and report back," she reminded him. "_Your job might have been_ to recover the warhead had you bothered to report in."

"There wasn't time," Michael repeated.

"Really?" she questioned, leaning back in her chair. "From the time the pair of you left Saravejo all the way back across to the Ukraine and into Kiev and yet somehow _you_ _two_ didn't have the time to follow procedure and notify your up-line about what was going on?"

Agent Westen shifted uncomfortably in his chair again and said nothing.

"Did it not occur to you that there _might_ be things we had learned that _you might want to know about_ so that you could accurately assess the field conditions given that you had determined it was necessary to exceed your mission parameters?"

"Such as?" he sniped.

Rayna blew out a short breath. Westen had been a good agent. They had worked well together in Uzbekistan where she had been the senior field agent. She had actually requested him once she'd been promoted to Station Chief for Balkan Operations and, while she had been hesitant about him working with Larry Sizemore, the older man had seemed to take on the role of mentor surprisingly well at first.

"Such as the fact that the FSK knew you two had intercepted the arms dealer and were planning on taking his place at the buy. Or maybe the facts that the Dmitri Zamanov had a mole in the Security Ministry and he also knew you two were coming specifically, that your covers as the Makarkins had been blown."

_That explains how they knew who were, _Michael thought and then he snorted.

"A lot of good it did them to know," he bragged. _Now the FSK really knew who he was; one unstoppable bastard, now they all knew._

Something had changed this young man; something about working with Larry Sizemore, the CIA's most notorious wet work specialist, something about being immersed in that chaos and the cruelty on the ground amongst genocidal maniacs. She had been sympathetic to his plight; she knew what it was like to survive a hellish situation and try to function normally again.

The former Navy lieutenant also knew why she'd been given the unrewarding task of being Larry Sizemore's superior. The Ukrainian Station Chief couldn't stand Sizemore and the Russian desk working with them on this joint operation was terrifed of the senior agent. Ms. Kopec herself had taken his disrespect and his sarcasm because she knew who Larry knew and because she wasn't about to let anything that sorry sonuvabitch said or did get under her skin or into her head. She'd taken plenty of abuse from drunken sailors in her time as a Shore Patrol officer. There was no way in in hell she was going to let _him_ get to her.

"Are we done here?" the angry young man asked bluntly.

However, the Station Chief over the Balkans was not about to tolerate anything of the like off of his apprentice. Michael Westen had been a good agent and Rayna had tried to work with _him_;

_Larry's Kid on the other hand…_

"We are now. Report to medical at 14:00 today," she advised flatly.

"I wasn't injured," he objected.

"_That_ is a matter of opinion. I'm ordering a profile review."

Michael was on his feet in an instant, chair skidding back and kicking over as he rose. He put his hands on her desk and scowled down at her. "I did my job! I retired an entire spetsnaz team, recovered a stolen warhead and you're sending me for a _psych evaluation? What the hell is that for?"_

She stood up, matching her subordinate's height and looking him straight in the eye.

"_That_ is _exactly why _you _are_ going. Confine yourself to quarters. You can spend your time finishing the field reports until then."

**()()()()()()()()()**

"Don't worry about it, Kid. I've got your back."

Michael had taken a detour on the way to his temporary living space to visit his mentor in the medical wing. He still hadn't taken the time to change out of the blood stained black clothing he had worn on the mission. All he could think about at the time was telling the one person who would listen to him that he was being rebuked for doing his job and doing it _damned well_.

"The warhead's destroyed and nobody is gonna miss a rogue spetsnaz team. You were just a little over enthusiastic, that's all."

He nodded and continued to stare at the dull linoleum floor, trying to get his temper under control. He had gone straight to Larry and all but shouted his indignation at what his boss had ordered him to do. _Who the hell did the Ice Queen think she was?_ _They'd been operating independently under the auspices of the Ukrainian desk. One one trip to Bosnia and she-__-_

Mr. Sizemore had held his hand out for the phone and made a call.

"I've already gone over that bitch Kopec's head. Stick with me and you'll be fine," he had reassured him. Michael had settled into the chair and practiced some deep breathing exercises.

And some tiny part of his brain wondered if sticking with Larry would ever truly result in his being _fine_.

"Look at me, Kid."

He did as he was bid.

"You got to learn how to deal with the Ice Queen," the senior agent chided. "You can't go flying off the handle like that. I know she's a pain in the ass, but she's got her uses for now."

Mr. Westen nodded and continued to flex his jaw as he clenched his teeth.

"You have to kill her with _kindness_," he advised and his laugh took on a nasty edge.

Mr. Sizemore thought about how close he had been to taking her out of the game. When her pup had insisted on stirring up trouble for the Kid over that little misunderstanding in the office, he'd been forced to settle that small problem for his protégé. But Agent Stanwyk wasn't all that bright for a college boy and had almost given the boss _his_ cup of coffee. Fortunately, Kopec was smarter than she looked and had caught the mistake. Larry had been lucky there.

_Besides,_ he chuckled internally _putting her in her place was one of the perks of this job_.

"Man, it hurts to laugh," he complained as he leaned back onto the pile of pillows. The medical facilities at the Ramstein AFB in Germany were the finest the US had to offer on the Continent, but military hospital beds were never famous for their comforts.

"Oh, well, it was worth a few broken ribs to see you in action, Kid. You really did great this time. I'm proud of you, Michael. That was some of your best work."

Normally, Michael would have flushed with warmth under such praise, but he was still disturbed by what had happened on multiple levels. Now that the "thrill of the kill" as Larry put it had worn off, he had started to question what he had done, not in regard to the mission just yet though that could be coming, but rather in the debriefing. His partner seemed confident that he would be able to thwart whatever disciplinary action she had in mind for him, but the young spy was suddenly not feeling as reassured.

And that's where Station Chief Kopec found him when she came in to perform Agent Sizemore's mission debrief. She had changed into a more formal dress and, despite the fact that her hair was still in a loose braid, her posture was sharply military as she strode into the room and halted midway between the two of them.

"Since you've obviously not done the paperwork, Westen," she glared at him pointedly sitting in the chair off to the left of Larry's bed, "you can take dictation."

She thrust a clipboard with a stack of forms and a pen attached to it in his direction. Michael took it after a moment's hesitation during which he looked toward the older man first.

That told Rayna everything she needed to know.

"Well, Sizemore, you've proven once again that it's not what you do, but who you know." .

"Oh, honey, it's who I know _because_ of what I do. Don't ever forget that," the older man replied with a big, bright smile firmly in place. He was genuinely pleased with her discomfort.

A very small "hrmph" escaped her lips. She was noticeably frustrated with that particular reality being demonstrated. For someone as controlled as the woman was, it was practically a scream.

_I'm glad her pup got his coffee, _Larry thought. It would have been a shame to miss this.

"Congratulations_, gentlemen_, evidently there are certain people in _management_ who agree with you that the results justified your actions regardless of how unconventional your methods were. How fortunate for the both of you that you managed to pull this off in the midst of the Security Ministry's retirement party."

Her conversation with higher ups had been frustrating indeed. The once feared KGB had broken down along with the wall in Berlin. Its replacement, the Ministry of Security, had suffered from inefficiency, disorganization and disloyalty, stolen warheads and rogue spetsnaz teams being the case in point. Now that the newly formed FSK was cleaning house, the Russians were no longer so eager to discuss how members of the American Intelligence community had stepped into the middle of their mess. They just wanted their warhead back, which the US government would obligingly be returning in pieces shortly.

"Langley is most eager to utilize your new found status with the FSK, Westen."

Michael's face became a mask of confusion. "Status?" he echoed.

"Apparently your name is now an FSK code word for a special ops team."

His mentor's grin was so wide it almost split his face in two, while he just looked dazed.

"Yes, I'm sure you must be very proud of _your Kid_, Agent Sizemore."

"You have _no_ idea, sweetie," Larry laughed.

"Due to your injuries, you're on leave until you are medically cleared for active duty," she informed him evenly. "I'm sure Westen will be happy to finish your paperwork for you in the meantime." She turned her attention to the younger man. "I'll expect the full debriefing report on my desk before you leave."

"Leave?" he questioned, a cold dread starting to crawl up his spine. _Had she managed to- ?_

"You will be leading the team that covertly returns what's left of the warhead to Moscow. Once the dead drop is complete, you will be visiting various field offices near key Russian intelligence installations until such time as your partner is fit for duty."

With that, she turned on her heel with martial precision and marched to the door.

"Westen," his boss continued on her way out, "I need a word with you about your 'bad will' tour," and she exited the room.

"I rather enjoyed that," Larry admitted happily as he stared at the slowly closing door.

Michael stood up hesitantly, glancing between the older man who was chuckling softly and the door which had eased itself shut with a light mechanical click.

"That's it? No review, no nothing, I'm cleared?"

His partner beamed at him. "What did I tell you, Kid? Now you know who you can trust, who's got your back, don't ya?"

The young operative stood there another moment, trying to reconcile what just happened with the events of the proceeding 72 hours.

_It appeared that she'd been overruled. Larry had won._

_Apparently_.

"Don't keep her waiting, Kid, and hurry back. You've still got a lot of writing to do. Remember what I told you," the senior field officer directed.

Agent Westen slipped out of the room and found the Station Chief standing in the hallway a short distance away from the door. He walked towards her slowly as she stood rigidly waiting.

She eyed him speculatively for several moments before taking an "at ease" stance. He didn't relax his own posture at all. As she stared at him in the pale fluorescent lighting, he looked older, more care worn, than she remembered, than his years warranted. With an internal sigh, Rayna supposed he could be thinking the same about her.

"You might be interested to know we intercepted another FSK communiqué. They found Vasily Andropov and his companions; seems the FSK was saved the trouble of questioning them, too."

Cobalt blue eyes locked together in a staring contest that neither seemed willing to lose.

"Bad will tour?" he asked at length without breaking her gaze.

"Langley's keen to exploit your exploits while it's still on everyone's mind," Ms. Kopec advised. "I'm sure you won't mind talking about it repeatedly with the different field offices in the area. It will give you something constructive to do while your partner's otherwise occupied."

_Love it or hate it, Westen was going to have to talk about __and think about__ what he did without Larry Sizemore around to filter it for him_. The former Navy woman may have lost the one battle, but she wasn't going to lose this war, not yet and not without a fight, anyway.

"You know, Westen, for a spy, loyalty is a strange thing. Your job is to deceive, to live among your enemies, to perform dark deeds for a noble purpose."

He wasn't sure where the station chief was going with this, but he was pretty sure he wouldn't like it when she got there.

"You can have loyalty to a lot of things, the Company, your country, _your partner_, but at the end of the day, it's that noble purpose that's supposed to guide you through the darkness. When you lose sight of _that_, the darkness is all there is."

Without another word Rayna Kopec executed a smart about-face and walked away, leaving her agent staring at her retreating back, seemingly mesmerized by the sway of the long dirty blonde braid between her navy blue shoulder blades

**()()()()()()()()()**

_In a dark room somewhere in the city, two men are talking quietly on either side of their sleeping comrade who had almost been a dead body. _

_The Americans hadn't finished one of them off or perhaps they meant to leave him alive to tell the tale. It's what he would have done, the FSK agent thought to himself before saying as much to his companion._

_And because of what the gravely injured man said when he was questioned, there was a new name, a new code word buzzing around the FSK and all her sister services tonight._

_"Michael Westen."_


End file.
